


a long hard day, a long hard night

by deadlybride



Series: kink bingo fills [19]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannibalism, Gore, M/M, Mark of Cain, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 12:29:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16475585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: When Dean’s body disappears from his bedroom after Metatron kills him, Sam nearly goes crazy looking for him—torturing demons, ruining relationships with other hunters, trying anything at all that will help. Digging through the Men of Letters archives, he finally finds a ritual that might bring Dean back. The cost isn’t something he worries about; when it comes to Dean, no cost is too high.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written for SPN Eldritch Bang; also written for the 2018 SPNKinkBingo square "Cannibalism," without which I wouldn't have had this idea. 
> 
> Thank you so much to my betas, thebratfarrar & the School, for their thoughtful commentary and assistance. Huge thanks also to armellin, who made the wonderful art. :)
> 
> title taken from [All That Matters Now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM_bU92nIAQ), by Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite.

That night, Sam drank most of a bottle of very bad scotch all by himself, sitting in the dark, and then he walked unsteady down to the archives and tried to summon Crowley, and he'd done that ritual so many times that he knew the ingredients and the sigils and the words off like he knew his own name, only—only Crowley didn't come. He tried again, and again, and Crowley didn't come. He knelt there dizzy with his hand pouring blood and it just—didn't make sense. When he finally staggered to his feet he held his hand cupped in front of him but he kept bleeding, the wet dripping down to the concrete floor while he made his woozy way down the halls to Dean's room, and it hurt in some soul-shuddering way to push open that door knowing what was behind it, only—only Dean was—Dean's bed was—

 _Sammy, let me go,_ the note said. Sam fell. His knees cracked, on the concrete, and he bruised himself so bad that just walking hurt for a long time after. He held the paper in his unhurt hand and he stared at it, his breathing odd and unsteady in his chest. There was no _letting go_. That wasn't—that wasn't an option. It hadn't been, not for years, no matter what they'd said, no matter what promises they'd made to each other. Dean's heart, pounding steady under his fingers, and their eyes meeting in dim-lit rooms, and the knowing of each other's separate skin. There was another promise that they'd made, a gut-deep wrenching thing, and Sam folded down over his bleeding hand and pressed his face into the scratchy-soft blanket that held Dean's scent and bled and thought, no. No.

*

When searching doesn't work and when torture doesn't work and when praying doesn't work, Sam turns to the bunker. He'll take anything that might help. Crowley can't be found; Castiel's sick, and useless. Witches avoid him, and if they don't avoid him they try to kill him, and then all he has is more blood on his hands and no questions answered. He keeps looking. Dean's out there, he knows it. Sam has a note. _Don’t look for me, Sammy._ Dean's out there, somewhere, and Sam is going to find him. He won't abide any other option.

The bunker's storerooms go deep. Old books, old rituals. Sam reads minute entries of Letters meetings, discussing new methods and means of discovery. He reads arguments over acceptable risk, over the ethical implications of acquiring power. He listens to a committee debating a proposed spell, one that no one would dare cast. _At any rate,_ says some long-ago scholar, _this is all academic. None alive have the blood required. It remains a theory, nothing more._

Alone, Sam takes notes. His heart thuds in his chest. It's silent, down here. The lamps are on in the library because they always are, but there's no music playing, no distant banging from the garage, no distracting commentary for Sam to complain about because he just wants to read in peace.

That's the problem. There is no peace. He makes a list. Ingredients, reagents. A little time. A decision to be made. That's it.

In the crystal decanter on the sideboard, there are a few pours left of the good whiskey. Sam hasn't touched it. He draws a line under the last item on the list and puts his pen down, and then slides the half-bottle of gas station bourbon over the table. The glass is loud on the wood. A long, slow swallow burns all the way down his throat, but it warms his empty stomach. He closes his eyes. If he goes through with this, there'll be no going back.

He puts the bottle down and adjusts his sling, his shoulder aching, then lays his good hand flat on the table and pushes himself to his feet. The decision has already been made. It was made the second he held that note in his hands and knew that Dean had been taken from him, and knew that he'd do anything to fix it. He never should've pretended otherwise—he's been around the block enough times that he should know not to lie to himself. The consequences don't matter; neither does the cost. All that matters is getting Dean back. It's all that ever has.

*

It seems important that he not be in the bunker, for what's going to happen. He drives north in his awful stolen car and turns off his phone for the ride. Hours on near-empty highways, moving fast under vaulted starry skies. The moon's carved down to the thinnest sliver, hanging low over the flat black landscape before it slips over the horizon and then Sam's alone in the dark, his stomach growling and empty, his eyes steady on the dashed yellow line slipping past.

There's a crossroads, seven hours later, in the middle of a huge grassland. National park, protected against development. No one around. He leaves the car on the side of the road. Dawn's threatening, thin grey light diffusing over the sky and a pink glow off to the east. He faces west, looks out over all the empty nothing. A tree, a mile down the road. A pointless wire fence marking the division between the road and the bare land. The morning air whispers cool over his face, fills his lungs clean and easy. He breathes until the sun crests the horizon and light breaks over his shoulders, and then he pops the trunk and gets his bag, hefts it with his good arm, and starts.

*

The ritual's bound in an actual circle. No runes, no special sigils, just a simple ring drawn over the meeting of the crossroads. The blood and salt of it gleam dully in the four fires Sam's built at the crossroads' corners. There's no moon tonight but with the fires built so high it's hard to see the stars, and anyway he's in enough pain that he probably couldn't see them anyway.

The demon arrives snarling, dragged unwilling from wherever it was—hell, or Crowley's side, or tempting some luckless sad son of a bitch, Sam doesn't know. It doesn't matter. "Sam Winchester," it says, trying for smug and missing by a mile. "Still looking for big brother? When are you going to cut those apron strings, kid?"

It's wearing a man—maybe forty or fifty, grey in his hair. Sam doesn't know if that's better, or not. His vision blurs and he has to blink rapidly, swaying on his feet. When he can see again the demon's smiling at him, though its eyes are wide. "Not doing too hot, I take it," it says. "Haven't we been over this already? Just let it go. Go out there and live your best life. No one's going to tell you a thing, pal. "

"I don't need you to tell me anything," Sam says. "Be quiet."

It squints at him, then looks exaggeratedly around at the ritual circle. "You sure went to a lot of effort to not have a chat." It hasn't moved, stuck right in the center of the circle, at the center of the crossroads, at the center of the fire. It can't move and Sam can see it flexing its fists. "This is quite a trick, Sam," it says, strain in its plummy voice. "How did you even manage to pull me here?"

He ignores it. Midnight's coming. He breathes and doesn't bother steadying himself. Rowan-smoke fills the air, ash and light straining up toward the empty sky, and the demon's still talking, still trying to strain its way to freedom, but it won't win. It can't. He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and nearly drops it, the plastic slick on his blood-wet hands, but he manages to click the side and it says 11:58. He smears it open, sets the screen to stay lit, and then lets it drop to the dirt road.

"Maybe we can make a deal, huh?" the demon says. It's afraid now. "I can fix those gashes, buddy, put your juice back in with just a snap of my fingers. Won't even ask for your soul, you just gotta let me out."

11:59. He drips red-black onto the phone's face and curls his fingers. Just another minute. The demon's pleading, now, fast-talking and shaky. It doesn't understand what's going on.

The phone clicks over, midnight, and maybe Sam didn't need to be watching the clock at all. His vision gets clearer and he takes a deep breath, almost steady, even with more blood than he knew he could afford to lose turning the dirt around him to mud. He wipes his good hand dry on his jeans and transfers the knife to it. It's time.

There's not a fight. Sam puts his bloody left hand on its chest and bears it to the ground and it goes, snarling, its eyes black. His muscles are shuddering with effort but he manages to cut its throat so it can't make another sound. He doesn't need to hear it screaming. The blood sprays out, hot and immediate, spattering on his face, but there's no time for that right now. The ritual was very specific. He's going to do it right.

The hammer he'd slung through his belt cracks the ribcage, but it's harder than it should be to get it spread open. He's weak. He wipes a hand over his face, smearing wet, and starts cutting.

Heart, lung, liver. The blood's still flowing through it, the body still desperately working, because a demon forces life even into something shattered apart and the salt and smoke and Sam won't let it leave.

His hands are slick on the knife and he drops it. The meat is hot, and the smell—iron, and sourness, and burning things. He hasn't eaten in a week, hasn't had water since before dawn, and his mouth's wet now, his tongue desperate, his lips pulling back. The demon stares up at him with dark weeping eyes, its blistered spirit trapped between gritted teeth. Sam slips down to his ass on the gravel, his body giving up on holding his weight. He has to pick up the heart in both hands, the wet muscle still flexing. He has until one a.m. to finish—just one hour, or the whole of this will be for nothing. His stomach clutches emptily and he takes a deep breath, leaning against the meatsuit's hip to brace himself, and brings the heart up to his lips. He doesn't think it's going to take him that long. He takes a bite.

*

*

At the cabin in Whitefish he throws open all the doors, all the windows, lets the humid afternoon air flood out all the stale. It's a mess of dust in here, cobwebs in the corners. The walls covered in the tacky remnants of all their old protective sigils. They whisper over his skin, but they can't touch him. The devil's trap etched into the floor burns deeper into the wood when he puts his hand to it but it doesn't break. That'll work just fine, he thinks.

The well out back still works. He pumps up a bucketful of water, freezing cold from the mountains, and washes the dried gore off his hands, his face. His shirt's a lost cause and he doesn't know what's about to happen and so he leaves it. He takes a careful mouthful of the water and it's so cold it hurts his teeth, and hurts more when it goes down, but at least the taste of blood leaves his mouth.

Back inside, he rolls up his sleeves, checking his forearms. The suicide-cuts have healed up so clean it's like they were never there. He ditched the sling back in Nebraska. He looks down at the trap and drags his hand through his hair, then takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes, and looks.

The world's all shadow and smoke. Points of light burst through the dark, but he doesn't need them. He's looking for the places where dark turns to black. The demon before, it was wrong. It gave up all kinds of things, before it was over. It couldn't help it. Sam had smiled, there in the circle with the fires burned down to ash around him, full to the brim with the knowing. He'd thought that all he was going to do would be to get answers from Crowley and get his revenge, in that order. He'd had no idea it was going to be this easy.

There. Black and black and black with a tinge of blood-red and with them, a black that sings against Sam like a plucked string, a black sharded through white pure soul and crackling fire. Sam reaches out and gathers it up and _pulls_ , easy as taking someone's hand, and then he opens his eyes and Dean's standing in the devil's trap, a pint glass in his hand and open shock on his face. He stumbles a little when he lands and some beer spills, splatting to the floor, and then Dean drops the glass altogether and doesn't mind that it shatters and slams a hand against the wall of air keeping him in the trap and he says, "What the hell, Sammy?"

Sam breathes out, finally. His breath saws in his lungs. "Dean," he says, stupidly, but that's—that's everything.

Dean's hair is longer than he remembers. Apparently it can grow when a body's dead and not-dead. He's wearing that red shirt Sam likes so well, his eyes bright and his color strong, and after a second he flicks a smirk at Sam like he's an enemy or a stranger, and he's so beautiful Sam could just go down to his knees. "Pretty neat trick," Dean says. He takes a step back, looking exaggeratedly around the ring of the trap. "Guess you found out the big secret, huh. You weren't supposed to look."

"You left me a note," Sam says. He folds his arms over his chest. "If you really wanted me to lay off you would've killed me."

Dean makes a little regretful cluck, shaking his head, and then cocks a finger gun at Sam. "Not too late!" he says. He winks and smiles, and his eyes flick black.

Sam doesn't answer. There's a demon in his brother, wrapped around him, wound tight through every breathing cell. He can see the shape of the person he knows, even with the damn mark pulsing hot just under the rolled-up cuff of Dean's sleeve, even with it radiating that hateful, fearful pain. Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam and then rolls his eyes, flicking them back to green while he looks around the trap again. He kicks the toe of his boot into the center of the star. Always fidgeting. One of many things Sam has missed.

"Okay, so you're not feeling chatty," Dean says. He kicks again at the trap, harder, and the wood floor creaks and cracks. Like Sam won't notice him trying to break it. "How'd you manage to scoop me up, Oddjob? I've got a lot of fancy new talents but teleporting sure as hell ain't one of them."

Talents. Yeah, Sam can feel that too. The First Blade is sitting heavy in Dean's belt, at his back, and Sam can feel the power radiating from it—from them both, their paired strength echoing together. Still. Even a Knight of Hell is just a demon, in the end. Sam knows what to do with demons. The knowledge sits full and heavy in a space just under his heart. He hopes Dean can forgive him for it, one day, after.

"Dean," he says. He gets an insolent little smile but Dean's paying attention. No matter how confident he might be, flushed with strength, he's not sure of what's happening here. He's wary. Well, Dean's always been smarter than he lets on. Sam smiles back and it feels wobbly, but Dean's eyes sharpen and focus. "Dean," he says again. "This is going to hurt, I think. But I promise, everything's going to be okay."

Dean steps forward, threatening the edge of the trap. "You promise," he says, low with threat. "What do you think you're gonna do, Sammy?"

Sam searches his face. God, he's beautiful.

He doesn't have to close his eyes, this time. Dean's right here. He leaves his hands loose at his sides and looks into Dean and then with a thought wrenches his soul out into the open air. The black roils out through Dean's mouth, through his eyes and his suddenly-bleeding nose, and then his body drops to the floorboards with a meaty thwack. No matter—it's the light that concerns Sam, now. His newly heavy blood surges high against the thin shield of his skin while he holds the smoke trapped. He can feel it. Every little piece of corruption, encouraged by the mark flickering hot lightning against Dean's true-bright soul—but Sam knows it, now, and it's no match for him. It's so easy.

Caught in the net of his power, the pieces that make up Dean separate obediently under the firm command of Sam's will. The bright of him is bared clean, beautiful and singing familiar when Sam reaches up and trails his fingers through it. The lurking black he sweeps away and it grinds into nothing but dust, disappeared from the earth like it was never there. He can still feel the mark threatening, somewhere under all his brother's light, but the corruption's gone. The taste of blood rises up at the back of Sam's tongue, but he smiles anyway, and with a thought he pours Dean back into the dear vessel of his body and watches his chest rise and his mouth part, alive and whole and good again. Sam breathes out. He did it.

*

He puts Dean on the bed in the back. Awful flashback to the last time he brought Dean to bed, but this is very far from that night in the bunker. He wishes he'd thought to change the blankets. Hopefully Dean won't mind a little dust.

He sweeps up the glass and throws a blanket over the puddle of beer. Dean got a cut on his arm when he went down, but it won't need stitches. Sam wraps a clean bandage around it, blotting the blood, and then sits on the mattress with his hip right against Dean's thigh, and puts his hand over Dean's beating heart, and closes his eyes, and waits.

When Dean stirs again, the sun's going down through the open windows. Sam keeps his eyes closed and so he doesn't know what expression is on Dean's face when there's a shocked deep breath under his hand. A moment of still silence and then Dean says, slowly, "Why's my ass wet?"

Sam smiles but something cracks, deep in his chest, and he folds over his own knees, burying his face in his hands. "You landed in your beer," he says, eyes squeezed shut.

Another little silence and then he can feel Dean shifting, his weight tilting the crappy mattress. When he speaks again his voice is a little higher, a little further away. Quieter. "Sam," Dean says. "How—"

He doesn't finish. Doesn't have to. Sam wipes his wet eyes and drops his hands to dangle between his knees. The floor between his boots is thick with dust and he watches that rather than look up to see himself reflected in Dean's face.

He'd thought about whether to keep it to himself, but he'd discarded that almost immediately. Secrets haven't gone well between them, the last few years. "You have to let me finish," Sam says. The bed creaks when Dean shifts his weight again. Dean doesn't touch him and for a second Sam yearns—wants to turn around and bear Dean down to the crappy mattress and make the ancient springs really groan, wants to take Dean's face in his hands and erase the distance between them—but he doesn't get that. Not now. He takes a deep breath. "We'll figure it out, but—let me finish, okay?"

"You haven't started yet," Dean says, with a ghost of humor.

Sam closes his eyes. He tells Dean everything.

Sometime during the telling Dean shifts around and stands up. He doesn't leave, like Sam half-expects—just paces over the table, braces his hands hard against it and stares down. When Sam describes draining his own blood Dean wrenches out one of the chairs and sits down with a thump. Sam hasn't rolled his sleeves down, though—Dean can see that he's healed. Maybe that makes it worse.

He doesn't know who the meatsuit was. He didn't look for a wallet, for ID. There wasn't much left of the man, after, and Sam built another fire once he was done and burned the remains. He doesn't let himself spare details. Doesn't let himself spare either of them. _For one whose blood contains a demonic taint_ , the ritual had said, _greater power may theoretically be accessed by the consumption of the blood, flesh, and organs of power of one who is possessed._ A demonic taint. That was putting it lightly.

"I don't know how they came up with the ritual," he says, finally. "Maybe it was Azazel or Lilith, one of Lucifer's loyalists, who knows. Maybe they weren't sure what was going to happen." He shakes his head. "Had to make the perfect vessel a little more perfect."

Dean's silent, over at the table. Sam sits up, blinking, and looks out the window. Sun's nearly down.

"I know what I did," Sam says. "I don't know if you can kill me, Dean, but—"

"Hey," Dean says, and Sam shuts his mouth while Dean's chair scrapes back, and then all of a sudden Dean's across the room, crouched in front of Sam, his hands on Sam's knees. "We've been over this. Nothing's getting you, not while I'm around. Especially not me. What kind of big brother do you take me for?" Sam huffs, his eyes getting wet again so he has to blink hard, and Dean squeezes his thighs. "Hey, you think you could look at me? I'm getting a complex, here."

Sam has to swallow around the solid mass in his throat, but how can he refuse. When he looks down Dean's eyes are kind of shocky, wide. He's not trying to fake a smile, thank god. Sam doesn't know how he'd handle if it Dean were trying to pretend like everything was just a-okay. Dean searches Sam's eyes. Sam doesn't know what he's looking for, but he stays still. It is the absolute least he can do.

"Do you feel okay?" Dean says, finally. Sam snorts and Dean frowns. "I'm just asking, come on."

Sam shifts out from under Dean's hands, has to get to his feet. A horrible sort of energy crawls under his skin. "I can't believe you," he says, under his breath, and braces his hands against the window. "Dean, I _ate_ someone."

It's the first time he's put it that way, even to himself. The ritual, the Letters, the notes, everything was so clinical. _Consumption_. _Ingestion. Absorption._ He doesn't know why they wouldn't just call it what it is. He can still taste copper in the back of his throat.

"I had to find Crowley," Sam says. The forest outside the cabin is dark, sunset trailing through the treetops. Behind him, he can hear Dean shifting, hear the scuff of his boots on the dusty wood, and more than that he can—he can _hear_ , feel, taste, some sense deeper than all of those that reaches out and knows Dean's soul by the tiny fault lines the mark makes. That faint greying distortion. He wraps his hands hard around the wooden sill, lets the edges bite into his skin. Rufus carved runes into the wood here. Sam can feel them, too.

"Sammy." Dean takes a step closer, puts his fingertips lightly on Sam's shoulder blade. Sam closes his eyes. "Sam, hey."

"You don't get it," Sam says. Dean's hand spreads out, warmth sinking through Sam's shirt, and Sam ought to move away. "What I did."

"You fixed me," Dean says. Sam's not looking at his face but his voice is firm, low. He takes another step and when he speaks again it's closer, his breath warm through Sam's sleeve. "What _you_ did—Sam. You know what I was. The things I—"

He cuts himself off but Sam can fill in what might fit into the awful empty space left behind. All sorts of things he imagined, in the time they were separated. It was harder, almost, than those times Dean has been dead. At least then Sam had known where he was. The empty unknown turned out to be more than he could bear.

Dean's fingers curl into Sam's shirt, shake just a little. "The ritual let you get me back. It's over now, Sam. We can handle it."

When you look up steadfast in the dictionary, Sam thinks, there ought to be a picture of Dean. He lets his heavy head drop between his shoulders, trying to drag up the strength to say what he needs to say. He should have left, before Dean woke up. Should have run. Maybe that would've been easier. Finally he stands up straight and turns around, sitting on the window sill. Dean's watching him, planted solidly, still not smiling but not looking at Sam like he's a monster, either. Not yet, at least.

"It's not over," Sam says. Dean frowns, but how could he understand. There are sigils painted onto the wall next to them, right by the bunk beds Bobby had put up. Sam puts his hand over one meant to ward off listening demons, and while he holds Dean's eyes he smokes it into nothingness, the paint evaporating off the wall like it was never there. Dean's mouth parts, shock making him still. When Sam pulls his hand back he turns it over and it's clean, no scorch marks or flaked paint, no sign anything even happened, and he drops his hand lax to his thigh and watches Dean's eyes follow it like it's a loaded weapon.

"The ritual, it wasn't a one-time thing. It's not like it was before. With Ruby." Dean frowns, lids flickering like they always do with that name. Sam wants to reach out. He balls his hands into fists instead. "There's not going to be a detox, this time."

"How do you know?" Dean says. Throws it down, like a challenge.

Sam bites his lips between his teeth. Shrugs, even if he knows that kills Dean when he's on edge. Sure enough, Dean's eyes go tight. "It changed something," he says. "In me. It's different. I feel—" There's no way he can articulate it. This—switch, that flipped, somewhere deep below his brain. Maybe it's in the soul itself. He takes a slow breath, considering Dean. "Maybe you know what I mean."

Dean frowns at him, not comprehending, before his eyes clear. Shame visibly wells up so fast before he turns away that there's a pulse of answering guilt, low in Sam's belly. He can't dwell on that, though. He has to make Dean understand.

"I'm not sorry I did it," he says. That needs to be clear. If nothing else, he thinks Dean of all people might understand that feeling. Dean's staring through the bunk beds, his arms folded over his chest. Sam takes him in. The lines of his profile in the gathering dark, the shape of his shoulders. The sturdy lines of him. He's so glad, despite it all, that he gets to see it again. He licks his lips and clears his throat. "I am sorry for what you're going to have to do."

"God," Dean mutters, and then he says, "Just—stop it. Stop it, okay." He shakes his head, drags a hand over his face, and then turns resolutely around to face Sam, square-on. His jaw's set. Stubborn. "Quit talking like that, already. You think there's anything at all you could do that would make me—at this point? Now? That there's anything at all?"

Sam sighs. "You don't know what—"

Dean steps forward and grabs Sam by the biceps, his fingers curling in hard. "Where've you been, genius," he says, shaking Sam a little. His eyes are wide and Sam can't see the color, not anymore with the sun sinking away, but they're not black. He'd know. "There's nothing, you hear me? No matter what. I promised. Back then, you remember? I promised. You made me one, too."

The church. Heat rises up, the memory flooding through. Dean's hands on him, pleading. The look on his face. It's pretty close to the one he's wearing now and Sam's vision goes a little splintery, a little blurred. He was angry, afterward, when he realized what Dean had done to keep him here. Thought Dean had broken his promise. It wasn't until recently that he realized it was a promise kept. _I plight thee my troth_. It isn't necessarily a kindness.

"Dean," he says, voice rough, and Dean reaches up and gets his hands on Sam's face, his thumbs sweeping familiarly over Sam's cheeks, over the stubble he hasn't shaved off in—too long. Almost a beard, at this point. He hooks his fingers over Dean's forearm, holds on, and lets Dean tuck his hair behind his ears, lets Dean try to hold Sam together with just his hands. He closes his eyes. He doesn't think it'll work, but Dean's right. He made a promise.

"It's dark as shit in here," Dean says, up close and soft. Sam huffs. Dean drags his knuckles over Sam's jaw, prickling in the hair there, and then takes a step back, grabbing Sam's wrists to haul him up, off the window sill. "C'mon, Sasquatch. I want to go home."

Sam swallows, and opens his eyes. Dean's looking up at him, close, and he's still not smiling but he's here. The least Sam can do is be here, too. "Yeah," he says, and shrugs off how his voice cracks. "Let's go home."

*

Dean mocks Sam's car choice for about a hundred miles: what kinda crappy plastic piece of crap, what's with this upholstery, manuals are a pain in the ass. Sam leans into the passenger side door and watches him drive. They hit the interstate and in the glow of headlights Dean's hands are lit up on the wheel, on the gearshift, his thumb tapping the side of his thigh. The radio's turned to some pseudo-classic station that keeps playing Journey, and Dean makes fun of that too but he doesn't bother with finding something else. He wants the noise. Sam will take it.

They're fifty miles past Billings before Sam thinks to ask about the Impala.

"Where were you?" he says.

"Some bar," Dean says, dismissive. His jaw's tight and he doesn't want to give up details. "North Dakota somewhere. It doesn't matter, Sammy." They're going down a hill and he busies himself with downshifting, checking the mirrors. Like it's nothing.

"We should get it back," Sam says, firmly. Doesn't matter. To hell with that.

Dean gives him an impatient look. "We can take care of it later," he says.

Right now, the only thing that Sam doesn't like about this car is that it has bucket seats. He wants to slide across the Impala's wide bench, wants to put his forehead down on Dean's shoulder, wants to breathe against him. Dean was with Crowley, he knows that. Maybe Dean thinks it'll be dangerous.

"I hate this car," Sam says. Dean glances at him, frowning, and Sam shrugs. "It's too small. No legroom."

"You've got crappy taste," Dean says. "We've been over this."

"Yeah, so, we've got a better option," Sam says. Dean sighs. Sam licks his lips and takes a deep breath. If they're going to keep together, if they're going to do this, there's no better time to start than now. "The demons won't be a problem. If that's what you're worried about."

Dean's hands tighten on the steering wheel. "You know that," Dean says. He glances over the center console again. "For sure. You know that for sure?"

Sam nods and Dean looks out again at the highway. "Let me help get it back," Sam says, soft. "I don't want to go home without it."

Dean bites his lip. "Without _her_ ," he says, after a minute. He sits back in the uncomfortable bucket seat, settling in for the drive. "She's a lady, Sam. Get it right."

*

Sam wakes up around the time they cross the Nebraska-Kansas border. He pushes upright with a start, has to wipe his mouth of drool.

"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty," Dean says. His voice is gravel, but he smiles at Sam anyway. His eyes are golden-green in the afternoon light, no hint of dark at all. "Thought I was going to have to get out a marching band to wake you up."

The Impala's rolling smooth down the highway between the soybean fields on either side. Sam slouches down on the bench again. For an instant, he'd worried the whole thing had been a dream.

It wasn't hard. That's the thing that still gets him. It wasn't hard, not at all. Dean had piloted them to some podunk nowhere in the middle of North Dakota and underneath midnight Sam had reached out and found the demons lounging around the car—guarding it or holding it hostage, Sam wasn't sure—and with the faintest impulse he'd wanted them to _go_ and they were gone. When they pulled up to the garage where it had been moved the whole place was empty, just a lingering stink of sulfur to indicate that the enemy had been there at all, and Dean had hustled them both out of the stolen POS and into their car and back out onto the waiting highway so fast they didn't have time to discuss it. He wishes he hadn't fallen asleep. Two days without and everything that happened and the Impala's familiar rumble and the long-ingrained dent where he's been sitting half his life—he didn't have much of a choice. He shifts and spreads his legs, stretching, and it's not exactly subtle when his knee touches Dean's. Dean doesn't move away and Sam folds his arms over his chest, focuses on breathing. It's a bright, clear day.

The bunker's dark, when they open the door. Dean pauses, at the top of the stairs. Takes a deep breath. "You better not have screwed with my room while I was gone," he says, after a few seconds.

Sam throws the big switches, turns on all the lights. "Threw out your mattress," he says. "Replaced it with a decent one."

"Liar," Dean says. He comes down the steps, slowly, his hand heavy on the rail. "Bitch, you love the memory foam."

His eyes are serious, steady. God, he's here. He's here, when Sam had battered his heart against the walls for two months trying anything, anything, half convinced Dean would be dead or lost to him by the time he caught up. He says, "Dean," with his voice frayed, and then Dean's dragging him in, hugging him, finally. Sam drops his bags, heedless of the crack when some glass jar breaks, lets Dean pull him down and buries his face in Dean's shoulder.

Dean's arms are tight over his shoulders, his hand broad and warm and familiar cupped over the back of Sam's neck, sliding up into his hair. Sam pulls him in closer. The steady rise of his back as he breathes, the smell of him. "Hey," Dean says, soft against Sam's ear, and Sam shudders, the muscles along his back rippling with just the shock of—Dean, Dean _here_ , finally home. He mutters _god_ into Dean's shoulder and lifts his head and Dean's looking up at him, two inches away. Sam takes a chance: he leans in and kisses Dean, just once, a soft careful press with no demand for more.

Dean takes a short sharp breath, his hand tightening in Sam's hair.

"I'm not—" Sam starts, pulling back again. "I just—"

Dean licks his lips. "We should probably talk," he says, low. He slides his other hand to Sam's hip, though, curling in, and when Sam steps back Dean just moves with him, staying close until Sam's pressed against the wall, the stone hard on his back and Dean warm all along his front. Sam takes a deep, shaky breath. Drags his fingers down the stubble on Dean's jaw, brushing his thumb over the soft shining plump of his bottom lip. Dean's eyes are going dark, now, his pupils spreading, and Sam can hardly believe it. Heat pools in his stomach. He drops his other hand to the small of Dean's back, presses him close, and all that warm denim pushes right up against Sam so that he drops his head back against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. God, it's been—so long, so long, and he thought—

"Maybe we'll talk later," Dean says, breathless, and Sam nods, and then Dean drags his head down and they're kissing, again, and it's such pure relief that Sam groans aloud into Dean's mouth, tasting him sour and soft and everything that Sam's been missing.

Their hands fumble together and their teeth clash, awkward. Sam doesn't care. Dean's overshirt is thrown to the floor and Dean scratches Sam's stomach when he insistently shoves both of Sam's shirts up. A stitch pops when Sam finally wrestles them off over his head, but that doesn't matter because Dean's hands are sliding up his chest, his teeth dragging over Sam's collarbone, and Sam groans and gets his hands on Dean's ass and starts walking them backwards, their boots knocking together and his knee between Dean's thighs. They crash into the war table and almost fall over, but Dean wriggles up to sit and spread his knees around Sam's hips and drag him in close, and shit is Sam hard, already, his dick full and desperate, pushing forward into all that welcome hot pressure. Dean groans and digs his nails into Sam's back and kisses him filthy like they're already fucking, and Sam has to hold on tight to Dean's neck, to his thigh pressed up close around Sam's hip, just to keep a grip on some kind of reality.

It's been so long—not just the two months of awful absence but also the terrible, terrible months before it, both of them circling each other with raw wounds, betrayal and distrust keeping them at arm's length. What a waste. They fucked once, just before Dean killed Abaddon. Just drunk enough to do it but not enough to make it not miserable. Afterward Dean had pushed Sam off and rolled to the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands, and then he got up and left. They didn't say a word about it, just let the hurt fester deeper, and then Dean went after Metatron alone, and then—

Dean bites Sam's bottom lip and then sucks it in, his mouth plush, and Sam's hips lurch forward, grinding into Dean's heat. "Fuck, Sammy," Dean breathes, lips moving against Sam's. He's holding onto Sam's waist now, his grip tight.

Sam pulls back, has to look—and god, Dean's mouth red and wet, his cheeks flushed and his eyes heavy-dark, and he's looking at Sam like—Sam gets his hands on Dean's face and holds him close and kisses him again, deep and knocking Dean's mouth wide, licks in and bites and then breathes into his mouth and says with their foreheads leaned together, his nose brushing Dean's, "Can I—Dean, can I—" and Dean shakes his head, clutches at Sam's side, whispers rough and low: "Don't, Sammy—don't ask, okay, please don't ask, just—"

He gets Dean's belt open, turns him around, shoves his jeans and briefs down to his knees. Dean leans over with his hands planted on the war table, breathing like he's coming off a sprint. Sam spits onto his fingers and rubs wet between Dean's cheeks where he's blood-hot and giving, his other hand flat on the low of Dean's back over his t-shirt, and spits again and pushes in two fingers at once, forcing past the resistance. Dean grunts like he's been punched but his hips arch back, his head hanging between his popped-up shoulders, his legs spread as wide as he can with his jeans around his knees. He's so hot inside, tight, and the spit's not nearly slippery enough but Sam fucks his fingers in and out anyway, spreads the wet as much as he can. Dean moans abrupt and loud, flinching back into it, and then Sam can't wait anymore—he tugs his fingers out of the tight clinging pressure and yanks his belt open, tears open his fly, and Dean's panting and rigid and waiting and he says, "Come on," barely voiced down at the table. Sam spits again and smears his hand over his dick, but he can't wait and Dean doesn't want him to and he hooks his hand over the turn of Dean's hip and finds Dean's hole and thumbs himself inside, and Dean groans and pushes back, helps, and in one threatening slide Sam's seated back home, pressed as close as he can get into all that incredible constricting heat, and he drops his forehead to Dean's shuddering back and just holds for a second, just breathes, tries to make sure his heart doesn't stop.

"Jesus that's big, you freakin' overachiever," Dean mutters, his voice shaking. Sam huffs. One of Dean's hands comes up and grasps Sam's hip through his jeans, and Sam has to grit his teeth when Dean clutches around him, inside. It's amazing that he doesn't come right then. He has to move, then, he has to, and he rocks in and out just a few inches and Dean moans again, an edge of pain to it, but he pushes back too, he shudders fly-stung and arches his hips, and so Sam does it again, and again, and Dean crumples down to his elbow and he drags his hand up to brace on the lip of the table and then Sam's fucking him, for real, shoving in tight and almost-painful, grinding where Dean needs it.

It's not wet enough. It's all friction, and pressure, and it feels so good Sam's lungs are going to collapse. Dean's barely loosening up around him but he's rocking back, he's helping. Sam pushes his hands up Dean's back, rucks up his t-shirt and smears sweat up the beautiful thick muscle over his spine, and Dean shifts, pushes up and fucks his hips back and says, "Sam," over his shoulder, deep and demanding, and Sam leans forward and kisses the side of his mouth he can reach, sloppy and off-center while he grinds in and in, while Dean clings to him down-deep. Dean licks over his lip and bites it and breathes against Sam's chin, groans low and tight in his chest, and then he nudges at Sam's cheek with his nose and whispers _come on, do it_ —and Sam's hips lurch harder into him just at that, his balls tightening, and he shoves his fingers into Dean's mouth and lets Dean lick them wet and then reaches down between them and rubs around where his dick is breaking Dean open, makes the slide just a little easier, and then he stands up straight and pushes Dean chest-down to the table and fucks in, because Dean's letting him, Dean wants him to, because Dean's hips arch back and his ass tilts up and he lets out jolted moans every time Sam pushes in, face buried in his folded arms.

Sam leans into the hand he has planted between Dean's shoulder blades and rocks in hard, just a precious few inches where Dean's holding him tighter and hotter than a fist. It's surging up, he can feel himself swelling, and this is—fuck, it's going to be fast, and he wants—he grabs Dean by the ribcage, his grip slipping through the t-shirt, and hauls him upright so he sinks back onto Sam's dick with a startled _fuck_. Sam grabs him rough by the jaw and kisses him again, gets his tongue in his mouth, and Dean groans into it but kisses back, or tries to at least with Sam's hips still working, churning in deep and tight, and Dean _ripples_ around him and then Sam comes, lurching in and holding hard with his breath coming fast and sharp. Sam leans his forehead into Dean's temple, breathes his sweat, unloads in spasms so deep his legs feel like they might give out. Dean wraps his hands around Sam's clutching forearm, squeezes tight. Fuck, it's been so long.

He slides his hand down Dean's throat, down his heaving chest, slips his fingers into the barely-there trail of hair and finds Dean's dick heavy and full, straining, and Dean sucks in a strangled breath, clutches again around Sam where he's barely softened at all. Jesus, that feels good, even if it's too much. Sam slides back, slow, pushes in again on his own slick mess, and again, the ride finally smooth. Dean leans his head back against Sam's shoulder, groans choked and low when Sam squeezes his dick and turns his face in against Sam's, breathes into Sam's jaw, and then Sam pulls back all the way, wincing with Dean when he's finally out, and then he turns Dean around to lean against the table and drops to his knees and sucks Dean's dick down to the base. He slips his thumb into the hot throbbing wet between Dean's legs and listens to him groan shocked out loud, and works his tongue, sucks hard and demanding and Dean's holds his head, his hips pushing back and forth between Sam's mouth and the deep pressure Sam's slipping inside. He comes so fast that Sam chokes, but he swallows it down. All that bitter familiar bleachy salt, with his mouth working soft and tender until Dean's thigh quivers under Sam's hand and he whispers _god, Sammy_ , oversensitive and trying to pull Sam off.

Sam slides up Dean's body and wraps his arms around Dean's waist. Dean blinks at him, eyes wet and dark, and then surges up and kisses Sam until his lips are tingling-sore, Dean holding onto him so tight there'll be bruises. He touches the damp at the corner of Dean's eye, slides back to rub comfortingly under Dean's ear. It's bright down here, brighter than it was when Sam was just using the library lamps. The air's cool on Sam's bare shoulders. Dean's breath is steadying, slowly, and he finally slides away from Sam's mouth, kisses his jaw and then drops his forehead down to Sam's shoulder, his arm still curled around Sam's neck. His dick pushes soft and wet against Sam's thigh, their bodies close, sweat springing up between them. Sam closes his eyes. It's looking like they might stay here awhile. That's perfectly all right with him.


	2. Chapter 2

Over the next week things are slow and odd and careful. Dean doesn't want to leave the bunker and neither does Sam. They sleep tangled around each other in Dean's bed, the memory foam trapping their heat close together. They relearn each other's long-familiar bodies. In the morning Sam still wakes up first, but instead of running he only turns over and puts his hand on Dean's back and feels his slow sleeping breath, the thrum of his blood, his steady still-beating heart.

They don't look for a hunt. They don't answer their phones. Sam sends Castiel a text, tells him _Don't worry, I'm okay_ , and he doesn't know if Cas believes him but there's something going on with the angels and Cas is staying occupied, at least for now. Dean's phone lights up multiple times before he just turns it off entirely. What could Crowley be thinking, Sam wonders. He doesn't know what they're going to do about that, either. He doesn't want to think about it. Not yet.

He'd expected nightmares. He'd imagined never sleeping again, but of course he knows what that was like from being soulless, and his soul being _absent_ is very much the opposite of what he's done to himself. He wakes up into the dark of Dean's room and breathes, the dreams he does have echoing deep in his veins, and tries to keep himself entirely inside his own body. In that weird half-waking space right out of sleep it's harder. The whole of the dark is just right there, waiting, all the time. He doesn't know now how he ever could have missed it.

Staying together, staying close, it's like a vacation. Dean cooks, digging through the canned stuff and the weird frozen things they'd both forgotten in the kitchen. They go into town once, together even though that's always only been a solo chore in the past, and Sam follows Dean around the little market while he picks up the makings for mac and cheese, for lasagna, for burgers. He doesn't miss how Dean hesitates over the ground beef, and looks away. "Don't forget pickles," he says, hands in his pockets, and Dean groans and says, "You and your pickles, you weirdo," and they don't talk about it, again.

Dean cooks, and Sam sits at the table in the kitchen and watches him, brings him beers when he demands them, rolls his eyes dutifully when Dean bitches about being the housewife, says thanks when a plate gets put in front of him. The food doesn't taste like anything. It doesn't even really fill his stomach. He chews and swallows mechanically, tries to remember the amounts he'd eat before, tries to figure out how to act normal. He's lucky that he doesn't puke it up. It's not as pleasant coming out the other end. He tries to make sure he's far away from Dean whenever that happens. He doesn't need the commentary; he doesn't know how he'd answer the more serious questions that would follow.

Eventually their little break from the real world ends, as it was always going to. A call, to Sam's phone. Castiel. They've been bingeing the Sopranos, again, and they're midway through an argument over what the ending actually means when Sam's phone starts buzzing on the table and they break off, both staring at it. "He's probably worried," Dean says, after a few seconds.

Sam picks it up. "Sam," Castiel says, voice even rougher than normal, "I was worried."

He swallows, and swings up to sit with his boots firm on the concrete floor, his back to Dean. "I'm okay, Cas," he says, and takes a deep breath, and gets ready to lie.

Dean pauses the show, shifts on the bed so the mattress tilts under Sam. Cas really is concerned; Sam can hear it in the awkward pauses, the urgency. He's probably wondering if Sam's going to do something drastic. Sam leans his elbows on his knees, listens to Cas tell him about traveling with some other angel. Cas asks, cautiously, if there's been any sign of Dean, and Sam clears his throat and says, "No, I—no, not yet."

"It will be okay, Sam," Castiel says, solemn. A learned phrase. Sam wonders if Cas picked it up from him, or from Dean.

"I know," Sam says. A car passes by, wherever Castiel is. Traffic, movement, because Cas is out in the world, he's doing something, he's trying. Sam puts his free hand over his eyes. "I'll call if I find anything, Cas, okay? Take care of yourself, buddy."

He holds the phone for a few seconds after he disconnects. Behind him, Dean says, "You lied."

Not judging, exactly. Cautious. Sam puts the phone on the bed, drags both hands through his hair. "I didn't tell him what I was going to do," he says.

There's a pause. Dean hasn't brought it up, not since they went to get the car, and neither has Sam. Sometimes Sam will catch himself staring into the distance, listening, and Dean always touches him and startles him out of it and doesn't say a thing. Like nothing's wrong.

"Can you—" Dean starts. There's a rustle, and then he comes around the bed and sits right next to Sam, their knees barely touching. "Uh, can you—find him? Like you did with me?"

Sam glances over. Dean's watching him, not shying away. The last time he touched these pieces of himself, misled by Ruby and stumbling in the dark, Dean was terrified. Back then it had seemed like just anger, just Dean being controlling. Easier to understand the real feelings there, from the safe distance of time—and hell, Sam agreed. Dean's still worried—there's that tightness by his eyes, his mouth hard—but he's here, he's asking. Sam takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. He reaches, _out_ , and his consciousness unfurls through the dark, souls passing by like so many bursts of light. He tries to concentrate, thinks of Castiel like he did of Dean, and there's—nothing.

When he opens his eyes he's sweating and Dean's hand is on his shoulder, grounding him to the earth. "You okay?" Dean says, squeezing hard. He's a little wild around the eyes, his voice determinedly level. "You were, uh, gone for a minute there."

"I'm fine," Sam says. He shakes his head. "I couldn't feel any angels."

Dean bites the corner of his lip, and nods. "Okay. So. I guess it's just… anything to do with demon stuff, then. Your powers, or whatever."

Sam swallows, and stands up. "Hell," he corrects. The texts had alluded to it, but he hadn't been completely understood. Not until he'd breathed that cool night air, after, the dark blooming through him. "Anything to do with hell. I'm pretty sure."

He doesn't want to look at Dean, but Dean's been steady, hasn't bailed. The least Sam can do is return the favor. Sure enough: when he turns around Dean's staring at him, leaning forward with his fingers knotted between his knees. "Could come in handy, I guess," Dean says, finally. His voice is very flat.

Sam snorts. "I guess that's one word for it," he says.

*

That night they eat dinner, and they finish the episode of the Sopranos they were on, and when Sam turns the light off Dean slips his arm around Sam's waist and curls in, holds him tight with breath hot against Sam's shoulder until they fall asleep. In the morning he's up first, for once, and when Sam comes into the kitchen after showering Dean's already made coffee and is sitting at the kitchen table with dark shadows under his eyes and he says, "I want to see the ritual, Sam."

Sam shows him, of course. The notes, with all of the reference material, were neatly put away in storage room four, where Sam had been compiling most of the work they'd done. He hadn't really expected to come back to the bunker when he left it; he'd just wanted the work archived. Proof that the ritual could be done. Maybe a warning, to anyone who might think to try. He brings the box up to the library and sits Dean down with it, lets him read it for himself. While he waits he sits in the armchair in the reading alcove, his hands folded over his stomach. Almost two full weeks, now, since he did it. The moon's nearly full.

The summation isn't that long. Dean pushes the notebook away, when he's done, and shoves up to standing. Sam watches him go to the sideboard, pour out a healthy slug of the good whiskey. He picks up the glass and brings it to his mouth, but doesn't take a swallow. "You didn't tell me—"

He cuts himself off but Sam knows exactly what he was referring to. He wrote it up himself, right at the end. "I wasn't sure we were going to get this far," Sam says. He's being honest. Dean shakes his head.

Heart, and lungs, and liver. The meat and blood of a living demon. That's how it starts. Under a new moon the vessel will absorb the flesh of a corrupted soul and the gates will unlock. Sam handled that. The texts were also clear on what came after.

"I think I'm supposed to keep—eating," Sam says. He tries to say it levelly. Maybe if he's matter-of-fact it'll be easier. "The vessel needs a demon, every new moon, as long as it remains unpossessed."

_The vessel_. It was bad enough, with Lucifer. That possessive air, the creepy almost-tenderness before he finally got inside Sam's body. These Letters-written documents made it sound like Sam was a—a jar. An empty thing, waiting for its purpose. He wonders if any one of them ever considered what that would mean, other than academically.

He clears his throat. "It doesn't go into detail," he continues. Dean's just staring down at the sideboard, as far as he can tell. " _Need_ is kind of vague. Obviously they could never test the ritual and so there are some variables that they debated, but there's nothing conclusive." He didn't write down and he doesn't plan to tell Dean some of what was discussed. If it gets as bad as it could, he'll have Dean part him out like they did with Abaddon. It's better than the alternative. He bites his cheek, watching Dean's back. He's just… still. "It's possible the Letters were wrong," he tries. Even as he says it he knows it doesn’t sound very reassuring.

"You said it was permanent," Dean says, and turns around.

He looks thunderous. That's about what Sam expected. "It is," he says. He knows it.

"You don't know that," Dean says, and before Sam can open his mouth again: "I don't care what it says in the lore. The lore can't be perfect because no one has been able to do this before, you said so yourself. No one else has ever been Satan's true vessel, and no one has ever been his—his—"

"Majordomo?" Sam says. Dean gives him a look and knocks back a swallow of his whiskey, finally. Sam sighs, looking down at his folded hands. "I know, Dean. It just… feels like this is it."

"Yeah, well, screw feelings," Dean says, and Sam looks up again to see him draining the glass and thumping it back onto the sideboard. "We're in the safest place on the planet, we've got all these Letters geeks' research all around us, we're going to find out for sure. We're not giving up, Sam."

His jaw's set, his eyes direct. "Okay," Sam says, nodding, and Dean nods sharply back and goes to the shelves, pulls off four of the best and oldest demonic texts and thumps them onto the table. Sam bites the inside of his cheek and stands up, goes to get them both beers. This is going to be painful. He ought to make it as easy as he can.

Dean never can stand the idea that something's wrong with Sam that he can't fix. They sit at their separate tables and go through the motions, poring over the same old books and the same old spells and the same research Sam had gone through before. Same story, same verse. Nothing's in the texts to 'fix' Sam because there's nothing, as far as the lore's concerned, that needs to be fixed. In the Devil's vessel existed the potential to control Hell and all its teeming vicious parts; a door has been opened to allow the vessel to do that and there's no reason for it to be closed. He'd escaped this with Azazel, all those years ago, because he chose Dean. He was choosing Dean even when he finally let Lucifer take over and, by then, releasing his buried power wasn't necessary because he was suffused with an archangel's grace and Lucifer's power was all that was needed. Funny, that choosing Dean again, over everything else, would bring him right back to his poisoned start.

On the third day, Dean's starting to get desperate. It's easy to tell. He's irritable, curt. Drinks more, not that it does much for him. Sam doesn't react. He gets it.

"Okay," Dean says, arms folded over his chest. "Let's go over it again."

They're in the hidden-away dungeon, behind the storeroom shelves. Sam takes a deep breath and goes to one knee, puts his hand on the devil's trap sunk deep into the cement. It hums against him, waiting. He looks up at Dean and disappears it, the circle and sigils dissolving away like so much wasted time. Dean's eyes tighten but he nods, chewing his lip, and so Sam concentrates for a second and bleeds a new trap up through the stone, a perfect Key of Solomon settling solidly down like it's been there for fifty years.

"Okay," Dean says, something stubborn under his voice. "So, that works."

"Yeah," Sam says, and drops down into the chair in the middle of the room. The shackles swing idly against the arms and he can feel those, too. He could make more, he realizes. All he needs is the metal. It's an odd sensation. To consider something and know immediately what will get it done. He folds his hands between his knees and watches Dean thinking. "I've been able to do everything so far, man."

Dean frowns, turning back to the legal pad with Sam's notes. Sam sighs and leans back into the chair. He keeps trying to find a flaw in Sam's powers, some kind of proof that everything isn't moving steadily ahead as promised. No luck, yet.

"Okay, then," Dean says, and turns to Sam with his jaw set. "What about this?"

He holds out his forearm, tugs his sleeve back another inch. The mark's a livid, painful-looking red, seething against the pale skin tucked below his elbow. Sam hates the fucking thing, has ever since the first time he saw it. "What about it?" he says.

"Can you take it off?" Dean smears his thumb over it, looking down. "It's some kind of evil. Shouldn't that make it part of your playbook?"

Sam takes a deep breath. Dean's frustrated. He lets it go. Anyway, he's not—totally off-base. "Come here," he says, and when Dean looks up he crooks his fingers. Might as well try. He gets an eyeroll but Dean obediently leaves the legal pad on the table and walks over, lets Sam take his arm when he reaches out for it. He draws Dean close to stand between his knees, and then slides his hands up Dean's arm, letting his thumbs settle on either side of the ugly thing.

When he reaches below Dean's skin he's still almost all light. His soul fills him up, a searing brightness that resonates like singing crystal with Sam's self. Only at the very deepest pit of him are there those odd dark fractures. A dissonance. The mark is… slippery, somehow. With Dean's soul uncorrupted Sam can hardly feel it. There's a nothing-space, a place where Sam's deeper senses can't settle, and even when he cautiously presses into the negative it's like swinging a punch at empty air.

"Hey," he hears, and he blinks his eyes open to find Dean's free hand on his jaw, shoving his face up. He takes a deep breath and his fingers hurt, and he looks down to see that he's holding onto Dean's arm so tightly that there's hardly any blood left in his hands.

"Oh, god," he says, lets go, and his knuckles feel like they creak with the effort. Dean's skin is yellow-white when he lifts his hands away, but the blood surges right back in and he knows it's going to bruise. The mark's swollen, dark and unaffected. Sam doesn't even want to touch it. He can't touch it, not really. Not in any way that counts. He drops Dean's arm entirely and sits back, fists his hands on his thighs. "Sorry."

Dean twists his wrist back and forth, shaking his arm a little. "What did it feel like?" he says. His voice has gone a little softer, some of the frustrated bite pulled back. When Sam glances up Dean's just—standing there, still. He traces the edge of the mark with a careful thumb. He touches it all the time. Sam's never asked if it hurts.

"I can't feel it," Sam says. "Not really. It's not like it was when—when you were a demon. Then I could reach out and take you, because your soul had been turned. But that—I can't touch it."

Dean bites his lips between his teeth and nods. He tugs his sleeve down another inch and most of the mark gets hidden away. "Guess we would've gotten too lucky on that one," he says, and it's matter of fact but Sam's stomach twists, anyway. Dean shrugs and turns around, goes back to the pad of notes and flips a page, his shoulders square and his back straight. "Okay," he says. "Let's try the next one."

There's nothing for it but to let Dean try everything. It's a little like that long, terrible year after Dean made that first deal. Sam can see the edge of the same fever in Dean's eyes. That bullheaded determination to save him from himself. Funny to see it from the other side. Sam alters sigils and steps in and out of ever-more-complex traps and removes his tattoo and replaces it under Dean's deepening frown, and he watches Dean's face and thinks that maybe this is a little of what Dean felt, back then, too. He knows it's bad—he knows it's going to get bad, and maybe it'll break them before they're done—but somehow the worry just isn't there. Dean's here. He saved him, at least for now. Whatever contract is set up between their two souls, however entwined they are so that one of them can't really survive without the other—Sam held up his end of the bargain. No matter what comes, he's not going to regret what he did. Every clean beat of Dean's heart feels like a victory.

They haven't really left the bunker, not since that grocery run. Sam sends another _don't worry about me_ text to Castiel and dodges the return call when it comes. The days are trailing along, nights following them, and the moon's slipping away, waning inevitably back toward empty. They take a break one night and Sam announces that he's going for a run, and Dean groans but comes with him. Sam keeps it at an easy pace, a long loping stride that's just enough to make his blood pump. The sun's gone down enough that there's just a little smear of purple at the far western horizon, the stars starting to peek out. When they come back around to the bunker entrance Dean leans over, bracing himself on his knees while he breathes deep. Sam stretches his quads, one at a time, smears the sweaty hair back from his face, and watches the moon. A few days left. The nights are still warm, humid, and he breathes it in. Earth, damp air. Fertilizer drifting over from the corn and soy fields surrounding the bunker's land. Dean stands up straight and blows out a long, slow stream of air, pursed lips turned up to the dark sky, and then turns his eyes on Sam. After a long minute he reaches out, squeezes Sam's bicep with a warm hand. "Come on," he says, and jerks his head at the stairs. "I'll make dinner. Shower first, though, you reek."

"Charming," Sam says, but he goes. The bunker's bright and still, smells like nothing but paper. He trails his fingers along the wall as they trudge along the hallways down to the shower room; stands back and watches for a minute while Dean shoves off all his sweaty gear and then blasts all that naked pale skin with hot water. "What," Dean says, peering over his shoulder under the jet, "is this a free show, or what," and so Sam strips off, too, showers the sweat off, and when he rinses off the last of the soap and closes the taps Dean muscles in and pushes him against the wall and goes up on his toes and kisses him, slow and soft with their mouths barely open, water getting under Sam's tongue, Dean's hands flat against Sam's chest. He tastes like nothing but himself. When he pulls back he ducks his head, breathes warm against Sam's collarbone. Sam holds onto his waist, his warm wet skin. Presses a kiss against his temple.

"Okay," Dean says, low. He stands up straight, drags his hand through his hair. Still so long, long enough that there's actually something to push back. He nods, at what Sam can't tell, and then pats Sam's chest, not meeting his eyes. "Okay. Dinner."

Dean feeds him burgers, again. They eat in the library, reading at their side-by-side tables under the lamplight. Sam chews, swallows. It all just takes like—nothing, still. Too bad. Dean's burgers are outstanding.

"Hey," Dean says, later. "You want seconds?"

Sam picks up his head, blinking. He's in the middle of a chapter on speculation about demonic control of the elements and totally lost track of time. Dean's hands are on his hips, his eyebrows high. "Oh," Sam says, and glances at his plate to make sure he actually finished. Empty, good. "No, man, I'm—totally stuffed, thanks."

Dean narrows his eyes and drops them to the floor. He runs his hand over his head again, hooks it back around his neck. "Sam," he says, voice very level. "I can't have you lying to me. Not about this."

Sam sits up straight. He opens his mouth, and closes it. He hasn't—

"You didn't eat breakfast," Dean says. "Or lunch." He jerks a thumb at his table and there's a half-eaten burger on his plate. Shit. Sam didn't even notice that Dean stole it. "Six miles I followed your lanky ass around the farms and you have four bites of a burger, pickles and all, and you're just a-okay? Come on."

That edge of familiar anger-masking-something-else has crept into Dean's voice and Sam slumps back into his chair. He doesn't know how he thought he could hide this. "Nothing tastes right," he says. Dean shakes his head, not understanding, and Sam shrugs, embarrassed. "Nothing tastes like anything. Food, I mean. Ever since, um." Neither of them like to say it out loud. Sam blows out a short breath, muscles on with it. "I guess it just doesn't—occur to me."

Dean frowns at him. "This isn't like—god, Sam, this isn't like how it never occurs to you to do the goddamn laundry, this is _feeding_ yourself. How are you not going to starve?"

The new moon's in four days. It's something Sam's been wondering about. "I don't know if…" He trails off. In the demon text there's an illustration opposite the page he was reading, a fanciful great beast perched over a human, its clawed foot on the human's chest. Sam closes the book, spreads his hands over the cover. "I feel fine. I'm not sure people food is really… on the menu, anymore."

Dean blinks, his face clearing. There's a pause. "Could've used a better choice of words," he says, but there's absolutely no humor in it.

They haven't talked about it. All this pointless research, all these tests, they're just going through the motions. Sam's jaw clenches and he has to consciously let go, pushes the books back and out of the way. "I don't want to do it again," he says. _It_. He's dodging the issue again. His hands fist and he lays them on the table, makes sure he's breathing steady and calm. "We've tried everything we can, from here. I don't think the Letters were wrong, about any of it. But I don't want to do it again."

"If they weren't wrong—" Dean licks his lips. He drags out the chair opposite Sam and drops into it, heavily, leaning forward. "Sam, if everything ends up being true—they said 'the vessel needs a demon,' right, so—what choice do you have?"

He shakes his head. "My choice is to not eat another person." Dean's face flinches, sort of. So much for carefully stepping around it. Sam drags his hands over his face and then folds his arms, looks up at the library's ceiling. The lights, the reliefs in the stone. The Aquarian star. "I wouldn't go back," he says. "I told you. I'd make the same call. I just don't want…"

Silence. There's not really anything to say. After a while there's the scuff of wood-on-wood, Dean scooting his chair back from the table. "I'm gonna take care of the dishes," he says, quiet, and Sam nods and listens to the footsteps go down the steps, away into the kitchen, and then he folds down and drops his forehead onto his fists on the table. Water kicks on, off in the distance. His stomach hurts, but not from hunger.

*

His dreams that night are deeper, stranger. He wakes up four or five times, blinks up at the dark ceiling and breathes slow and feels like he sinks right back into them. Nothing concrete, nothing that he remembers. Only the sensation that something's waiting. His subconscious isn't always subtle.

He doesn't eat the next day and Dean doesn't offer him anything. He drinks coffee, because caffeine still seems to be a thing. "How's it taste?" Dean says, watching him from the other side of the kitchen island, and it's _almost_ a dig but he seems also to genuinely be asking.

"It's hot," he says, and that's… pretty much it. Whiskey doesn't change the flavor, when he drops in a healthy glug, but he's hoping that alcohol might touch him the same way caffeine does.

Dean stares, then shrugs and lifts his mug in a little toast. "Better living through chemicals," he says, and downs the whole thing in three long swallows.

That night he dreams again and it's like a glimpse of some other world. Darkness swells up in huge billowing gouts, points of light receding like distant stars, and when he closes his eyes vision doesn't go away. His hands stretch out and he watches the dark rise up to fill them, a weird not-pressure pressure that slip-slides under his palms. He could just close his fingers, catch it if he wanted to, and then something judders the darker universe and he opens his eyes and he's—in bed, he's in their bed and Dean's scrambling out of it in the normal plain dark of the bedroom and Sam blinks, shaking his head, trying to seat himself in _this_ world but Dean's—puking, leaning over the sink in the corner with his shoulders jerking as he retches.

"God—" Sam says, coming awake all at once. "Dude, are you okay?"

He didn't drink much more yesterday than usual. He's panting, done (thank god), leaning his elbows on the sink to spit up the last of it. Sam sits up, flips the blanket back. Dean's side of the bed is damp. When Sam comes up behind him and puts a hand on his back Dean flinches, but Sam leaves his hand where it is and Dean doesn't throw him off. He's soaked. Acrid sweat, and the vomit, and Dean spits one more time and then turns on both taps on the sink, blasts them on full to wash down the mess.

"What's up?" Sam says, while Dean ducks down and drinks from his cupped hands. It's not bright enough in here to really see anything, with only the filtered light from the hall coming in through the grates. He can see the shine of sweat on Dean's neck, the curve of his ear. He grabs the towel slung over the chair and hands it over when Dean stands up, and Dean takes it, buries his face in it, doesn't answer. "Seriously. Bad tuna?"

He flicks the bedside lamp on and—Dean looks terrible. Pale, sweating. Sam frowns and comes back over, reaches out to put his hand against Dean's forehead, and Dean dodges it, swaying back. "Come on, I'm not five," he says, voice in shreds.

Sam's about to argue back when he sees the sink. Most of the mess washed away, but—"Is that blood?" Sam says, but it was stupid even to ask. Of course it is. Spattered up on the sides of the sink, at the back behind the faucet where the water didn't reach, and when he looks up Dean's mouth is grim while he wipes sweat off the back of his neck, his eyes on the floor. "Dean," Sam says, helplessly. If—if all of this, if everything he's done was for nothing—

"I'm okay," Dean says. He tosses the towel into the sink and rubs his hand down over his face. "It's, uh. It happened before."

"Before," Sam says, flat.

Dean sighs and goes over to his dresser, uncaps the bourbon left on the top and necks a swallow straight from the bottle. His voice is rougher still when he says, "Before I turned into a demon. Crowley explained it to me."

"Oh, well, if Crowley said it," Sam says, and Dean gives him a look over his shoulder before he drops down to sit on the edge of the bed. "What?"

"It's the mark," Dean says, to the bottle. "If I don't—it wants me to take people out, wants me to kill, and if I go without for too long…" He shakes his head and snorts, quietly. "I yakked in the garage yesterday, too. Spaghetti's real weird coming up the wrong way."

Sam slumps onto the green loveseat. "What happened to not lying?" he says, but not sharply.

Dean runs his thumb over the mouth of the bottle, a slow endless circle. Sam presses his fist to his mouth, watching him. "It's not bad," Dean says, after a silent minute. He glances up and must see Sam's disbelief, because he shrugs. "Really. I mean—okay, so it doesn't feel awesome, but I'm handling it."

Handling it. Used to be it was Sam hiding blood in the sink. "Do we need to go on a hunt?" Sam says. He sits forward in the chair. "Would that do it?"

"Are you kidding, we can't find a job now," Dean says, frowning at him. "Two days until the new moon, we don't know what's going to happen with your—thing, and you want to, what, go find a vamp's nest? Come on."

Sam shoves up to his feet. "I don't want you throwing up blood." He drags his hands through his hair and then drops them to his hips, staring Dean down. No response, and he shrugs. "So, what. No big deal? Are we seriously not going to try to do anything about this?"

Dean starts to twist the cap back on the bottle of bourbon. "I am handling it," Dean says, slowly. "One screwed-up body crisis at a time. Your thing comes first."

"My—" Sam has to clench his jaw, swallow down his first response. He takes a deep breath. "There isn't any point to my _thing_ , to any of it, if you're not here." Dean's eyes dart up to Sam's face, his hand tight on the bottle. How, Sam wonders, does he have the audacity to look surprised. Something below his stomach trembles. How is it, always, that Dean doesn't believe him. How many ways does Sam have to prove that he means it.

"Hey." Dean stands up, finally. There's still hardly any color in his face, his lips chapped and pale when he licks them. He puts the bottle back on the dresser and leans against it, for a second. He looks—tired. "I'm not trying to—throw it in your face, or anything. I'm so friggin' delighted not to be a demon that I could puke up my guts all over again. I just need to make sure you're okay, first. I need you to be okay."

Round and round. Sam folds his arms, twists away. The annoyance, the irritation pulsing at his temples, he knows it's all just covering for fear. Knowing it doesn't make it less annoying. "I need you to give a damn about yourself, man," he says. Even from over here he can see the spatter of blood on the sink, going to rust in the open air. If Dean doesn't clean it up it's going to stain.

"Come on, you've met me," Dean says, with an edge of black humor, and Sam closes his eyes. He could throw up, at that. There's a little pause. "Sam, come on."

Sam drags in a deep breath. He's not going to get back to sleep tonight. "You should get back to bed," he says, and opens his eyes to find Dean staring at him, a grim cast to his mouth. "Keep up your strength, or—whatever."

Dean doesn't say anything by the time Sam closes the door, quietly, behind himself. The halls are bright, the concrete cool on his bare feet while he paces down to the library and finds all of their fruitless research spread out, waiting. It's tempting to go to the sideboard and drain all the decanters down to dry and see just how well alcohol does work on his changed metabolism. He takes a deep breath, and sits down at his laptop, booting up again and going to his notes on everything about Cain and his awful fucking mark. _Handling it_. Dean should've learned by now. Sam's not going to let it go, not without a fight.

*

Things are quiet, the next day. Dean comes in and makes coffee while Sam's reading in the kitchen, and they don't talk. There's a weight in Sam's throat, in his chest. At the island Dean makes himself a half-assed peanut butter sandwich and he leaves all the stuff out on the counter when he picks up his plate, when he heads for the other door, when he pauses. Sam doesn't look up, turns a page in his book. Dean's boots are loud on the stairs, when he goes.

There are shackles in the dungeon that can hold any demon. There are traps and prisons that can be built. The problem is that Sam's not a demon and never will be. His soul isn't built for that, not anymore; it wasn't in Lucifer's nature to take a corrupted vessel. Nothing Sam can think of, short of the cage, can trap him, and there's a moment standing at one of the shelves in the library where he pauses and considers: could he get there? If he wanted, if he pushed through the spaces between earth and hell, could he open that door and walk through it and let it slam shut behind him? The immediate swell of fear from the pit of his stomach is answer enough. He has to sit down, his heart beating too fast and his hands quivering before he wraps them around the arms of his chair. He closes his eyes. He tries not to think of himself as a coward.

"You okay?" he hears. Dean.

He's standing at the steps down toward the kitchen, caution in his face and a beer in his hand. Sam clears his throat. "Yeah," he says, but he can hear how convincing that was.

Dean wavers in the doorway for a second and then comes over. Sam takes the beer when he holds it out, wraps both hands around the chill of it. It won't taste like anything, if he drinks it. "A vision, or something?" Dean says. He shrugs when Sam looks up at him. "I don't know. You've gotten a weird look on your face a few times now. Figured you were seeing something."

Sam drags his thumb over the label on the beer. "Not a vision. Not really." He's not sure he wants to go into it, not now. It's not something he ever wants to think about again. Dean hitches one hip up on the table, settling in, and Sam shakes his head. "How are you doing? Any more, you know."

"Way to change the subject," Dean says, raising his eyebrows, but he shakes his head, too. "No, I haven't ralphed again. I told you, I'm okay for now."

"I really…" Sam takes a deep breath, clenches his jaw. "I really want to believe you on that but I don't think I can."

Dean drops his head. Long night of not sleeping and Sam's too tired to fight about it, he doesn't want to go round and round, but pretending and avoiding doesn't do either of them any good. Today's the longest they've been apart since he got Dean back, and it sucked. A reminder of something he never wants to feel again.

"We've got twenty-two hours until the new moon rises," Dean says, after a silence. His hands are folded together, against the inside of his thigh. Sam watches them, watches Dean restlessly tap his thumb against his other hand. "After, I promise. We'll figure out something for me. We can—hell, we can go on a hunting spree across North America, killer roadtrip, whatever. Right now we've got to focus on you, Sammy. I can't think about anything else."

Heat licks at the back of Sam's eyes, pressure rising, and he puts his beer down on the table and then curls over, presses his forehead to Dean's knee. Muscle clenches but after a startled second one of Dean's hands settles on Sam's hair. "You can tie me up," Sam says, muffled against Dean's leg. "I don't know if it'll work."

Dean's fingers card through his hair. "Hey," he says, "if you want somethin' kinky all you gotta do is ask." Sam doesn't laugh. Dean's thumb traces around the back of Sam's ear, firm and familiar. When he speaks again it's quieter. "We'll figure something out, Sam. We always do."

That's part of the problem, Sam wants to say. There's always a solution, no matter what. It's the ramifications that always turn into something worse. He slides his hand around Dean's calf muscle, squeezes it, and picks his head up. In the suddenly-bright light Dean's looking at him seriously, his eyes shadowed with tiredness. He takes a deep breath, lets it go slow. What does it say about him that, no matter what's waiting tomorrow, it still feels worth it.

He tucks two fingers into the unbuttoned split of Dean's henley and tugs, just lightly. Dean folds, easy, and Sam tilts his face up for the kiss. Dean's familiar lips, his familiar mouth. The comforting slide of his tongue, the scrape of stubble, his taste. Sam thanks everything that he can still taste _that_. Dean puts his hand on Sam's jaw, slides down to his shoulder, grips abrupt and needy, and Sam stands up between Dean's legs, holds him close, drinks him in.

They fuck careful and slow, in Sam's bed. Dean sprawls out on his back and Sam takes his time, uses too much lube, doesn't stretch him much. Makes the last few inches when he slides home and Dean gasps into his hair feel like something earned. While Dean adjusts they kiss, sloppy, and Sam holds still, running his hand restlessly along the thick muscle of Dean's thigh where it's hitched up against his side. When he finally can't stand it anymore he pulls back from Dean's mouth, and in the scattered light from the hall he can just barely see the gleam of Dean's eyes, the shine on his lips. Dean doesn't nod but Sam doesn't need him to—all he needs is Dean's hand sliding into his hair, the warm flex of muscle along his side. He kisses Dean once more, the soft sound of their lips parting loud in the quiet, and then puts his forehead down against Dean's shoulder and grinds home.

He can barely hold himself up, after. Dean makes a good pillow. They lay in the dark with their legs still half-tangled, Sam slumped just enough to the side that he won't actually crush him. Dean's got Sam's arm in an underhand grip, keeping it slung over his chest, his thumb moving in slow circles over the hair on his forearm. Sam doesn't know what time it is, but when he thinks about checking—no. He curls his free arm under his head, watches Dean's shadowy profile while he stares up at the slowly-turning fan.

"What are you going to do?" Sam says. "If I—"

Dean's thumb doesn't stop moving. "Not really worth talking about, Sammy."

Sam pushes up on his elbow, his thigh sliding along Dean's as he shifts. He can't really see Dean much better, just the shapes and angles of his face, his eyes dark pools. "I'm serious," he says. "It's not fun for me either, but we ought to—think about it."

Dean keeps hold of Sam's arm, his fingers curling firm around the muscle. He tucks his other hand behind his head, almost casual. "What did you think was gonna happen?" he says, and it really sounds like he's asking. His grip tightens on Sam's arm, so there's no way he can pull away unless he fights. "What were you thinking? You'd come and save me, fix me, and then I'd let you—what, go off and die? Starve yourself, kill yourself? You thought I'd kill you?" He's being quiet, faking calm, but strain starts to show at the last. Sam swallows and stays very still. Dean's hand on his skin almost hurts, for just a second, before it relaxes and he starts tracing those slow circles again. "That's not in me and it never has been. Not once, Sam. Stop asking."

Sam licks his lips. When Dean says it that way it's like a law's being laid down. Scripture, chapter and verse. End of. He lays back down, scrunched on his side so his feet don't hit the too-close footboard, his head on the pillow. He lets his hand curl over Dean's shoulder, and when he closes his eyes and sinks down Dean's light hums familiarly against him. Like a song he's always known. When he blinks the room resolves back into dimness and Dean's skin is warm, a little sweaty, ordinarily human under his.

"I'll stop asking," Sam says, finally.

Dean nods, then turns over. He puts his back to Sam's and scoots so that it's pressed right against Sam's chest, his ass plush against Sam's hips, Sam's knees tucking into the back of his. He keeps Sam's arm pulled around his chest, like a hug. "Good night, Sammy," he says.

They're both sweaty, still smeared with tacky drying lube, and it reeks of sex in here. Sam shifts and pulls Dean closer, his soft dick pressed into Dean's warmth, Dean's heart under his palm. They'll worry about everything else in the morning. There's still a sliver of moonlight left.

*

He wakes up with his belly cramping, his heart thudding oddly loud in his ears.

Dean's in the kitchen, when Sam comes out with his bones ringing. He takes a deep breath when he sees Sam and puts down his beer. "How are you feeling?" he says.

Sam drops into one of the chairs at the island and buries his head in his hands. "Don’t ask me that if you don't want me to lie," he says, and even his voice feels—heavy.

He didn't know it was going to feel like this. It's nearly noon. He slept late and his dreams were full of—

"Should we stay here?" Dean says. Sam shakes his head, trying to breathe through all the impulses shuddering tightly under his skin. "Hey, hey. You gotta talk to me."

There's—smoke, somewhere. Sam can taste it at the back of his throat. Not something burning. His stomach cramps hard enough that he curls in on himself, his gorge rising on air. He hasn't eaten even pallid normal nothing in—what, two days? Three? He can't remember now. His molars grind together.

"Sam," he hears, and a hand touches his back. It's—mortal, or close enough, and he rears back and slaps it away. When he blinks Dean's backing off, his hands held up. "Okay, okay. You just need to tell me what you need."

Sam sucks in deep breaths, stale underground air and nothing here, nothing that he wants. Dean's staring at him, his eyes big, and Sam focuses on him and thinks: _no_. "You've got to—" His voice is raw. He swallows. "Tie me up. Get me—down, in the dungeon, cuff me to the wall, okay, I can't—"

Dean's shaking his head. "I don't—"

"I am not going to be this," Sam says, or shouts maybe, his hand slamming so hard into the island that the metal shivers. Dean's eyes dart down and then back up and Sam swallows hard, again, saliva guttering up under his tongue. "Do it," Sam says.

He doesn't quite remember the stumble down the halls. Stone and tile, cold cement. Dean knots him to the loop of metal in the wall with good strong rope, rope they've used to tie up monsters before, and Sam curls his hands around the trailing end of it, holds on tight. The world's inconstant, its substance slipping past under his eyes, and he works his fingers against the rough texture of the rope until they hurt. Dean says something and Sam doesn't hear it but he nods, blindly, pulse thundering. It's bright down here. The thing is that Sam knows that the light is a lie.

Sting of pain or not-pain, he can't tell. He blinks. _Wake up, damn it!_ Breath snaps into his lungs and he can see: a knight, his. Dean. He blinks again and wet runs down from his eyes and Dean's face splinters in and out of focus. "Thank god," he hears, and watches Dean's lips moving. "Sam, it's been hours, I don't think—you're not okay, I think we've got to do something."

He licks his lips. Salt. "I'm fine," he says. Dean shifts; he's a corona. Hard to see properly. "Keep me here."

"You're bleeding." Wet, on his fingertips, on his wrists, sliding down his arms. On his cheeks. On his lip, and he tongues against the inside of his mouth and tastes blackened copper. Like sucking a penny. "Sam, damn it, this is nuts."

You're mine, Sam says, and he can feel his voice coming from the pit of his belly but he can't hear it, so perhaps he only thinks he said it. You're mine and you'll do as you're told.

Something's—swelling. His breath is coming faster. The world's a swirl of light, of deepening shadows. Hot familiar touch smearing over his face and lips, up into his hair, and then there's—something—and hands are up on his wrists, untangling the knot of rope, tugging it out of his grip.

_No_ , he thinks, and "No," he says, makes sure it's out loud this time, and his—Dean is saying something, something, but Sam can't and won't hear it and _no_ and what comes out of him cracks like a lash, a ripple straight from below his spine, and when he blinks Dean's slammed up against the spell cabinet, eyes dark and enormous and his hand pressed to his chest.

"What," Dean says but it's so quiet below the roaring in Sam's ears that he might've whispered. The ropes uncoil from Sam's wrists and he stands up off the wall. A shift, somewhere deep. His throat's dry and cracking when he swallows.

He can't see. He runs into the doorway when he leaves and trips on the stairs up into the war room. The dark heaves, tangible under the shimmering surface of this sheath of world. When he staggers up the stairs the door's locked but it springs open obediently under the brush of his stinging fingers and then he's—out, open free air. Shouting, somewhere, but it won't stop him. He breathes deep and opens his eyes and sees and reaches, infiltrates, and there, a blacker black, and when he blinks there's a woman standing shocked on the dirt driveway in front of the bunker, her eyes black in the nothing-light from the stars spinning overhead.

"Winchester," she says, an uncertain smile wobbling across her stolen face. Sam can hear the borrowed blood pounding in her and his mouth gets so wet he nearly chokes.

"Sammy." Behind him.

He's on his knees, suddenly. The demon narrows her eyes and then something cracks and she falls, the meatsuit betraying her. Sam drags himself closer, dirt and springy late-summer grass under his fingernails, and when he's near enough he wraps a hand around her ankle and hauls her close, living meat shuddering under his grip. Her throat has collapsed under the weight of his will so she can't scream and she's full of smoke and blood, everything he needs. His jaw works.

"Sam, let me—fuck, this is—Sam—"

A hand on his shoulder. Intent to pause, not stop, and he snaps his will around it. "Sam, Sammy, please," and he blinks and kneels up and that's—the light. A humming, resonant. His. He breathes out and there's a choked sound, pained, somewhere close, and then something says, "Hang on," rough—brutality running under it like a river—and then his meat shudders and there's—a blade, a runed silver edge that slices the throat, a semicircle of spilling black-red that pours out into the world like a hopespring. He falls on it and drinks. Metal, smoke. The heat of it fills his mouth, sinks down to the pit of his belly. He swallows deep and sits up on his heels and feels like he's taking his first full breath since he woke up.

Blood. He breathes again, swallows again. The world's getting—closer to real. He can see, sort of. The arteries are severed in the throat of the meatsuit and Sam blinks at that, the blood flowing sluggish down over her blue blouse and turning it black, Dean's kneeling behind her, his hand on her forehead, holding her up. He's got a knife in his other hand, his expression like—

"Come on," Dean says, voice coming up from a pit to throb in Sam's ears. A shiver of dark is coursing through his light but it's nothing, nothing compared to the swirl of corruption he's holding trapped between them.

Sam licks his lips, the insides of his teeth. "I need more," he manages, and Dean's jaw squares and then he kneels up higher, reaches down and flips the knife in his grip and stabs it into the meatsuit's gut, yanks straight up with the blade and blood pours out but the meat's there, ready for Sam. The demon's mouth is open, working pointlessly, her eyes black above, and Sam gets his hand on her throat, his grip slipping in the spill. His stomach yawns, empty, and he reaches into her opened belly, finds her liver and rips it free. It's full, of blood and iron and a shivering trapped atrocity, and he bends his head to it and bites, his teeth cleaving through the heat of it so easy. Warm spill on his tongue, slippery in his mouth, faint resistance against his teeth, and he groans, swallows it down, a heat like liquor pulsing out from his stomach. He bites again, and again, the organ smearing against his cheeks. Acrid sulfur, coppery blood. The meat's a contaminate, flavor bursting up and his hands shaking with the pleasure of it. Too soon, he's done, last morsel swallowed down. He picks his head up to find Dean staring at him, breathing hard. The meatsuit is staring, too, her body cracked open, viscera spilled out onto the waiting earth. Useless, but for one thing.

"I want the heart next," Sam says. He licks the corner of his mouth. The night air is cool on his wet face. Dean doesn't move, for a long breath-held moment, and then he jerks, drops the meatsuit to the ground next to him, readies the knife. He brings it down like a hammer and Sam hears bone snap. He waits with his hands open and empty on his thighs. He's still hungry.

*

Sam breathes deep and even, sitting with his back up against the metal rail outside the entrance. It's very dark outside, with no moon, and the stars aren't really much to see by. They've been working at night for a long time, though. Dean stands up, slowly, on the other side of the driveway. He tries to clean off the demon-knife with the tail of his shirt but that's a lost cause. They're both soaked.

The corpse sprawls broken-limbed and undignified in the middle of the driveway. It was a woman. Sam doesn't know her name, or who she left behind. She was still alive, whether by sheer luck or by the demon's intervention. She was short. Maybe thirty. Her bra was printed with absurdly cheerful little blue sea-shells.

"Are you done?" Dean says. He waves a hand at the body.

Sam nods. Dean tucks the knife into the back of his jeans and drags his wrist over his forehead, holding it there for a few long seconds, before he disappears around the corner. He comes back with an armful—drop cloths from the garage office, two shovels. He drops them all with a clatter onto the driveway and then bends and starts to arrange the body. Her torso is a cracked-apart pit, her clothes drenched in blood and torn open, but her limbs are intact. He folds her arms over, straightens her broken legs. Sam watches, his heart beating slow in his ears, while Dean spreads out the dropcloth and then awkwardly flops her onto it, trying not to spill any more. The ends tucked in and he rolls her, makes a neat bundle. Not dignified, not respectful, but efficient. When he's done there's a tattered burrito on the side of the path, a huge bloody smear left in the center of it.

The bunker's warded grounds are discreet, tucked away from what passes for the main roads out here in farm country. Dean picks a spot under one of the few trees and sticks his shovel in the ground and has to muscle a little to get that first bit of dirt. It hasn't rained much, lately. The ground's hard.

Sam's stomach doesn't even feel full. He closes his eyes. He's not tired, or hungry. The faint ache that had taken up residence in his shoulders is gone. Hell seethes around him, the slight space that passes as the veil between worlds no barrier at all. If he wanted—

He swallows. His hands are tacky when he unclenches them. Under the tree Dean's digging, steady, shovelfuls of dirt slowly rising in a pile to one side. Sam gets to his feet, sways for a second. The demon was—young, kind of. It didn't get special attention in the pit and it languished under the kind of torture neglect and fear could seed deep into the soul, and it was just a lackey, out making the world a tiny bit worse, grinding cruelly against the good in people to add a little grey into the light of their souls, and it was bad. The world's no worse for losing it. Sam licks his lips and finds blood, drying, left behind. The shrouded form on the driveway is so, so small.

Dean jerks when Sam comes up next to him with his own shovel, but after a second he moves over, makes room. They dig together, squaring off the sides as much as they can, making a pit. When they're three feet down Dean steps out of the hole and Sam sticks his shovel in the mound of displaced dirt and watches Dean carry the body over, watches him go down to one knee to awkwardly lower it in. It hits the bottom with a meaty thump. Dean pulls a little bottle of accelerant out of his back pocket and squirts in a dose and Sam stands back, but not far enough that when the lighter hits the shroud and the whole thing goes up he doesn't feel the wave of heat. She catches fast.

In the abrupt firelight it's easier to see the gore. Sam's so fixed on the patch of dark bloody dirt in front of the bunker entrance that he doesn't catch Dean's expression when he says, "Fuck, this is—"

When Sam looks up he's tearing his shirt off, his undershirt too, rips them off over his head and throws them directly into the fire to burn. His skin's not clean, underneath, smears of blood rusty-dark on all that pale skin. He's stained up to his elbows and he looks up at Sam with his eyes huge in his face, his mouth parted with shock.

"Dean," Sam starts, but—

"I can't," Dean says, shaking his head, and he opens his mouth like he's going to say something else but then he snaps his teeth closed, so abrupt Sam can hear the click. He turns his face to the burning grave, the firelight spilling against the horrible expression he's wearing, and then he turns on his heel and strides off toward the bunker, his bare shoulders rigid as he jumps down the stairs and slams through the door.

Sam takes a deep breath. He feels—one step outside of himself. He backs up against the tree and slides down it, bark catching and popping off as he drags along the trunk. He wraps his hands around his knees and settles in to wait. The fire has to burn down before he covers it up. It'll take a while.

*

He's still not tired when he comes into the bunker. The lights are very bright. He walks quietly down the stairs, moving down past the storage rooms to the resident hallway, and Dean's door is closed and so is his, but he's not going there. He walks steadily and tries not to touch anything and finds the shower room dark and empty, and he flicks the lights on and turns on the water, and then strips off all his clothes and leaves them in a pile on the floor and walks into the boiling hot jet and takes the blast of water like a blow and then something in his chest crumples, cracks, and he makes some weird sound and drops down to his ass on the tile floor, buries his head in his hands.

Water puddles around him. Red with the swirled-away blood, dark with the dirt on his hands. It's scalding. He drops his hands and watches his skin flush. It hurts, but that's a distant thing.

"Jesus," he hears, after a while, and he blinks and looks up and—Dean. Of course, it's Dean. Clean, in jeans and a henley that have no stains on them at all, and he stares grimly at Sam from the doorway before he comes over and steps right into the big pan of the showers, his boots squeaking on the wet tile. He turns off the water and crouches down next to Sam, wrapping his hand around Sam's bicep. "How long have you been sitting here, seriously," he says, but it's rhetorical. Sam doesn't know. The hot water never runs out.

Silence for a second. Dean squeezes the muscle, hard, then gets up and disappears for a minute. Sam breathes. There's so much steam in the air he hasn't had a chance to get cold.

A towel wraps around his shoulders. Dean, back. "Come on, up," he says, and so Sam forces himself to stand, Dean's arm around him to keep him steady, only he's already steady. Dean's being so careful. He pats at Sam's skin where he's blistered-hot, but already the sting is draining away. Sam closes his eyes and Dean rubs him down, like a horse. Like a mental patient.

When he drank the blood before, Dean locked him up in the panic room. The panic room's gone, now, or at least it's not accessible under the bombed-out ruin of Bobby's house. It wouldn't work for Sam as he is now, but oh, if only. It was cool, and dark, and safe. Safe for Sam, and made everyone else safe, too.

Dean runs a fresh towel over Sam's head, scrubbing him mostly-dry like he's a little kid, and then drapes it over the back of his neck. He's standing close; Sam can feel the heat of him, even through the steam. It's no effort at all to look, and Dean's soul is—still brilliant, still mostly clean. Just one crack, a tiny fissure way down below the surface. Funny, that a murder doesn't do more.

"You need to say something," Dean says.

Sam settles back into the ordinary dark. "I'm thinking," he says, and opens his eyes.

Dean's standing with his arms folded, staring at Sam's bare chest. Sam looks down, too. He maybe gave himself first degree burns, sitting so long under the nearly-boiling water, but his skin is healing, fading back to its normal sort-of-tan. Just like the slits when he bled himself almost to death for the initial ritual; just like the sprain. What would happen, he wonders, if he shot himself, or if an enemy stabbed him in the heart. If Dean did. He looks up and studies Dean's face, and knows it's fruitless even to ask. He promised he'd stop. Still: "You're still here," he says, because he's not allowed the other question.

Dean's jaw clenches. "Where else would I be," he says, voice flat, and Sam has to turn away, then, because he doesn't know what his expression might be but he knows he shouldn't let Dean see it.

The towel on the floor is totally soaked, smeared with red-brown. Sam drags his hands through his hair and then yanks the other towel off of his neck, wraps it around his hips. Absurd to be naked for this conversation.

"Sam, please," Dean says, and now he just sounds—tired.

"It's bad enough that I'm—" Sam shakes his head. He knots the towel and shoves his hand through his hair again, getting it off his face, before he turns around. Dean's got his arms wrapped around himself, his stance firm and stubborn. Well, Sam can be stubborn too. "I wanted to die. Better that than drag you into it."

"Yeah, I figured," Dean says. "Like I'm not already in it." Sam frowns at him and Dean unfolds his arms, glancing down at the mark on his arm. "I'm not some saint here, Sam. You're not ruining me."

"It's different," Sam says. He takes a step back.

Dean lifts his chin. "How?"

Sam's stomach turns over. Dean knows how. He knows. Sam licks his lips and opens his mouth, but he—

"I'm not going to leave," he says, carefully. Dean's eyes sharpen and he makes like he's going to talk and Sam shakes his head. "I swear, I won't. I won't—try anything, either. I need to be alone, for a little while. Please—just don't do anything."

Dean looks into Sam's face, his lips slightly parted. It's a long, awful moment before he nods. For some reason it's that which makes pressure rise up behind Sam's eyes and he has to blink, quickly, but he nods too. It's hard to leave, hard to walk out past the pile of his filthy ruined clothes and out into the cool hall, without running, but he manages it, and he manages to keep to a steady pace until he finds his room and closes the door behind himself, and locks it, and then he sits down on the side of his bed and buries his head in his hands and doesn't move for a very long time.

*

Hell's right there, for the taking. All the time. Sam lays flat on his stone of a mattress with one hand tucked behind his head, his eyes on the ceiling but his vision far away. Demons and the dark, hand-in-hand. The far-away furious screaming of souls on the rack, their light dimming with every evil wish. The concentrated smoke of those who walk the earth, with their little missions and machinations. Down the hall, around the corner, a bloom of almost-grace, perfect in almost every way, but for the sliver of black that lets Sam touch it.

Hours alone, to think. Dean doesn't come knocking. Sam can look and know that he's staying close to the bunker—can follow him from the garage to the kitchen to the gym, where he works out for almost two hours. He turns his eyes away, after a while. Not fair that he can see Dean and Dean can't see him. Lots of things aren't exactly fair, but there's no reason to contribute to the grand total.

Finally he sits up, gets his feet on the floor. Puts his boots on. Tries to keep all of his senses reduced down to the shell of his body.

Dean's sitting in the kitchen, doing something on his laptop, when Sam finds him. No playing at nonchalance—he looks up immediately, lowers the screen halfway. There's a beer at his right hand, three empties on the table beside him, and Sam bites the inside of his cheek.

"Thought I was going to have to send in a search party," Dean says, after a few seconds of silence.

Sam checks his watch. It's—oh, almost midnight. "Had a lot on my mind," he says, and Dean raises his eyebrows before he looks down at his arms, folded on the table. Sam takes the steps down from the hall, stands in empty space. There's coffee in the half-full pot, dishes clean and stacked in the drainer. Dean's wearing a different shirt to the one Sam saw him in last, that red-and-blue plaid he's had for what feels like forever. Life goes on. He swallows.

"Are you just gonna stand there, or—?" Dean's eyes are tight, his jaw squared.

Sam comes and sits down, straddling the stool. These damn chairs have always been too short for him. "We've both done a lot of stupid," he says. He hasn't rehearsed this. Maybe it'd feel easier if he had. Dean keeps looking down at the table. "Like, a lot. Me trusting Ruby, you and the mark. Basically the entire apocalypse. But there was always a big… purpose, you know? Killing Lilith, killing Abaddon. Saving the world." He pauses, and shakes his head. Dean reaches out one hand and curls it around his beer bottle, but doesn't take a sip. Sam chews the inside of his lip for a second before he can keep going. "I always thought, you know. We do a lot of crap, but we're the good guys. Even after destiny got done with us, or whatever you want to call it. We tried to make things better. We weren't… selfish about it."

Dean looks up at him, then, finally. He looks like he's listening, really listening, not just waiting for Sam to be done so he can argue back. Sam shrugs, his throat thick with some emotion he doesn't want to look at too closely. "It makes this worse," he manages. "This was just for me. I couldn't stand it, and so I—"

"Sam," Dean says, quietly.

Sam shakes his head. There's no taste left in his mouth because he drank about a gallon of water to get it out. It's not like he can't remember it, though. "I look back and, obviously, in hindsight there were other things I could have done," he says. He folds his hands on the table. "But for two months all I could think about was—you were gone. You were gone, and the idea of not looking, of not doing anything—everything—to get you back, no matter what that cost… I couldn't do that again."

Dean hasn't looked away from his face. He's got a look, like… Sam doesn't know. His eyes are tired.

"When I was—angry," Sam says, slowly. "About Gadreel." Dean's expression flickers. That hurt's so far away now Sam feels it only as a remembered echo, bone broken and healed. Nothing left but a little thickness in the joined-together place. He licks his lips. "I tried to think about that day, in the hospital. How you could—do that to me. I know you and so it wasn't that hard to picture, but it still just..."

Dean's mouth has tightened, guilt flooding up, and Sam rushes ahead because that wasn't the point, he just needed to explain: "But that's the thing. You saved me, with Gadreel—Ezekiel, I guess. This time, I saved you, but I feel like I'm just going to drag you down again and I can't—I can't stand it."

Quiet. Dean turns his beer around, spreading the slight condensation on the table, and then stands up. He goes over to the fridge and grabs another beer, and comes back to the table, and holds it out for Sam to take, and doesn't sit down again until Sam has. "My turn?" he says, and Sam holds the beer in both hands and nods, and then Dean's mouth twists, and then he says, "That's a load of crap, Sam."

He holds up a hand before Sam can say anything back. "Okay," he says. "I listened. You listen." He shoves his laptop out of the way and leans his elbows on the table, his shoulders popping up high and almost defensive. "All that stuff, I get it, it's a big deal. I'm not gonna argue about who did what, and why, and whether it was _selfish_ or not. We've had our reasons, every time, and whether they were good reasons or they were bad reasons they were still decisions we made, and we've both had to live with them." He taps the table with a stiff finger, his eyes intent on Sam's. "Both of us."

Something about the look on his face makes Sam think, again, of the church. For a second he can almost smell dust and wet wood.

"Saving you by letting Gadreel in," Dean says, and his jaw goes hard for a second. "So, that was selfish. I couldn’t stand you dying, especially not after we'd just—" He cuts off, takes a swallow of his beer. Sam watches his throat bob and holds his own beer cold between his palms. Dean swipes his lips dry with one thumb, then fixes his eyes on Sam's, almost defiant. "But you know what, we saved a bunch of people after that, too. We stopped Metatron, us and Cas. So maybe it's not quite as selfish as you're saying."

"I'm not trying to start a fight," Sam says, but before he can keep going Dean shakes his head.

"I'm not fighting, I'm just saying," he says, steady. He folds one arm over his chest and tilts the other, enough that the mark's just visible under the edge of his sleeve. "And I'm not trying to—get out of something, here. I was the dumbass who said yes to the Mark of friggin' Cain, and it's helped us do some good, but that's not all it's done."

"You didn't know what was going to happen when you took it," Sam says.

Dean snorts and gets up again. "Right then, it wouldn't have stopped me."

Sam bites his lip. Dean drains his beer and tosses it into the can on his way over to the shelves on the far side of the kitchen. There's a bottle of rye stashed there, with the cans of flour and beans and corn, and Dean plucks it out. Apparently this conversation needs a higher ABV.

"So, what are you saying," Sam says, leaning back on his stool. "We've both done stupid selfish crap and so, so what? It all balances out?"

Pouring a healthy few glugs of rye into a coffee mug, Dean doesn't answer. He puts the bottle down and downs the whiskey like medicine, grimacing after. He refills the mug and then turns, leaning his hip on the coffee table, holding the mug against his chest. "I'm saying… maybe it's not as bad as you're thinking."

Sam's mouth drops open. "Eating people."

Dean grimaces. "It's nasty. It's—okay, it's really nasty." He licks his lips, eyes searching above Sam's head for the words. Sam can't believe that there's anything Dean can say that might possibly, ever, in _any way_ excuse— "But, Sam." Dean shrugs. "We kill demons. That’s what we do. When's the last time we exorcised one and the meatsuit just ended up being a-okay, went home to his wife and kids and lived to get all the therapy? Angel blade to the brain or heart, that's the way we do it."

Sam clenches his jaw, drops his eyes to his still-unopened beer.

"Yeah," Dean says, but not meanly.

If he thinks back… Sam swallows. He doesn't actually remember the first person he killed. The first real, flesh-and-blood human. Was it the girl who'd held Meg, all those years ago? Or had she already taken a mortal wound by the time she came to him, smiling and pretending like she could be a friend? He doesn't know. He doesn't know if there was someone before her—or a werewolf who could have learned to hold it together, or a ghoul who only ate the truly dead and just got caught in their crosshairs. Something he's thought about, a lot, on long nights when sleep wasn't anywhere on the horizon. Usually he can put it out of his mind. Hard to consider ethics when a monster's trying to break your brother's neck. This situation isn't that, though. Not really.

Glugging liquid—Dean's pouring a second mug of the rye. He puts it down in front of Sam and sits on the stool opposite with his own mug, watching Sam's face. There's a certain amount of sympathy there, but he's got that stubborn turn to his jaw. Sam's not going to win this argument. He doesn't even know what he's arguing, really. Just—

"You know," Sam says, and clears his throat. He slides the beer aside and takes the mug. Sharp boozy smell—this isn't fine spirits. Just as well, not like he'd be able to taste it. He runs his thumb around the lipstick-red pattern on the rim. "I used to think we'd end up doing something normal? I wasn't even thinking about school, or—or marriage, or anything like that. Like somehow we could… step back, a little. Get a house, maybe straight jobs. Still go hunting, when someone needed us. Just, maybe one day we wouldn't have to deal with all the crazy." He shakes his head. Dean's watching him over the rim of his mug, his eyes steady. "Somehow something always comes along."

He takes a swallow. No flavor, of course not, but the heat of it's still sharp, alcohol flowing straight down to his gut. He licks his lips and it stings, just a little, where he's been chewing them.

"Well, we got a house," Dean says. He looks around at the kitchen, bright and familiar, and then slides his eyes back to Sam's. "And I can deal with crazy."

Sam chews the inside of his lip. He nods. Dean's lips firm, and he slides his mug across the table to gently knock into Sam's. "Bottoms up," Dean says, and he's not smiling but his shoulders are a little more relaxed. Sam does as he's told, simultaneously with Dean, and—ouch, it really is rotgut, but the warm of it pools in his stomach. Maybe booze really does still work. Dean blows out a long breath, shuddering, before he puts the mug down. "I'm going to bed. You coming?"

"Not yet," Sam says. Dean's eyes narrow, just a little, and Sam manages to dredge up an almost-smile for him. "I just laid in bed for a day, man, let me stretch my legs a little. I'll come down in a while."

Before he leaves the kitchen Dean lays a heavy hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezes, lingering for a too-long second, and it's so warm and close and _him_ that Sam's eyes sting.

He sits there for a while, looks at his hands, and then he turns his eyes on the beer bottle six inches away and stretches out his fingers. The bottle slides slowly over the wood, slipping into his palm as though of its own volition. He breathes out. Crazy. Well, if that's what they're going to deal with, then Sam needs to be ready. He doesn't want to be taken again. He's going to be in control. There's no other way he can handle it, and any other option isn't fair to Dean. There's a little forest of empties on the table. Time to practice.


	3. Chapter 3

On the second day after the new moon Dean comes into the gym and announces that he's found a hunt.

Sam lowers the bar against his chest, holding his biceps rigid. "What do you mean, a hunt?" he says.

Upside down, Dean's expression is hard to read, but odds are good that he's getting something mocking. "Did you hit your head? What do you mean, what do I mean—a hunt, Sam, a job. Bad things happening to probably-good people, and we stop it."

Sam pushes the bar up again and rocks it up onto the rack, Dean hovering a hand under the bar until it's safely settled. He hasn't quite finished the set but he's panting, anyway, and when he rolls up to sit on the bench sweat rolls straight down his back. "You—do you think that's a good idea?" he says. He stretches out his hands, stiff from holding the bar for so long, and then has to catch the towel Dean throws before it hits him in the face.

"All my ideas are good ideas," Dean says, muffled as Sam drags the towel all over his sweaty head. When he looks again Dean's leaning against the weight rack, dressed for the day, his sleeves rolled up enough that the mark's visible, peeking out all sore and red. There's a serious cant to his eyes, even as they skip over Sam's body. "Three dead in Phoenix. Cops don't know what's going on, and the coroner report was 'inconclusive.' Sounds like it might be our thing."

Hunting, like this. Sam holds the towel loose between his knees, the slow good ache of working out seeping through his muscles.

"If we're gonna do this," Dean says, "we've got to do it. I'm tired of hiding, Sam."

Strain, tucked up under the determination. Sam nods. Procrastinating the inevitable never makes anything easier. "Yeah," he says. He stands up, drops the towel down to the bench. "Okay, yeah. Let's do it."

Dean nods back, his mouth firm, and then looks Sam up and down again. "Good. But you're showering before we go, I don't want your stanky ass ruining the upholstery," and he's spun on his heel and already down halfway down the corridor before Sam can come up with a decent comeback.

*

Phoenix in late summer is about the worst place in the world to be. A tangle of freeways and asphalt and samey soulless subdivisions, cauldron-hot, dust storms rolling in with the monsoons. They haven't actually done all that much work in this town, which is just as well; Dean gets cranky in the heat and Sam just… hates it here.

They get a cheap motel out in one of the huge suburbs, between a parched-looking strip mall and a mattress store without any customers. The coroner's appointment is set for eight o'clock the following morning, with their usual pretext of FBI looking into a case that's hush-hush, no questions please, et cetera. Means they have a night to kill. The motel's a dusty nothing, the aircon under the window keeping the room at an icy sixty-five but being as loud as possible while it cranks along, and Dean looks balefully at it and then at Sam and then walks right back out of the room again. Sam doesn't have much choice but to follow.

Wet and hot, outside—a hundred degrees, and it's almost nine at night. Monsoon clouds pile up over the huge expanse of city, stained orange with light pollution, and Sam can't see the moon. He doesn't have a sense for it, yet. Wonders if he will.

Dean takes them to a scuzzy bar, one that would be absolutely his kind of place if it weren't for the pop-country blasting through the speakers. Even so, they each get a beer, Dean's with a whiskey chaser, and they settle into a squeaky booth in a corner while the regulars drink, pre-season football playing on the TVs tacked onto every wall. Sam sips at his flavorless beer, fixes his eyes on one TV. Commercials, and then a blur of fake-green turf and guys crashing into each other. A murmur of approval from the table next to them; a drunk cusses too loud sitting up at the bar.

"Earth to Sam," Dean says. Sam blinks, shakes his head. Dean's frowning across the table at him; both their beers are empty and Dean's swirling his whiskey shot through the condensation making a lake of the table. "You a huge Bears fan and I didn't know?"

Sam glances up at the television. Oh—yeah, that's blue and orange. "I, uh—honestly couldn't have told you who was playing."

Dean stares at him, and sucks the inside of his cheek. "Sam," he says, and then pauses with his mouth open, and then swallows half his shot instead. He puts the glass down very precisely in front of him and then leans forward, his elbows planted heavy on the table. "Are you okay? Like, are you—here for this?"

Another burst of noise: a fumble, from one team or the other, and the hardcore fan up at the bar starts blurrily cheering. Sam watches that, the guy swaying and lifting his pale beer up in the neon lighting, so he doesn't have to see Dean being concerned at him. "I'm good," he says. "I am, I—really am. You were right. We need to get back on the horse, because otherwise…"

He doesn't finish and Dean doesn't fill anything in for him. They sit in silence, country taking up all the air in the room, until Dean finally finishes his shot, grimacing briefly at the bite of alcohol before he flips the shot glass over on the table. "Okay, then," he says. He's firmer, cheerier, than he needs to be. "I'm getting some wings to go—you're not allowed to share—and then what do you say we watch some adult films on the pay per view in the motel and turn in early, hot stuff?"

"How romantic," Sam says, dry, and Dean grins wide and charming at him and then swings off out of the booth to order whatever he's going to order from the college-aged bartender, and Sam lets his eyes sink closed. The dark's right there, waiting. No demons in the bar; he'd know. That's something, at least.

The visit to the coroner in the morning provides more confusion than answers. Dean's wearing both his best suit and dark circles under his eyes, and Sam does most of the talking while the woman shows them the latest corpse of three: found dead in his car, suffering clear signs of electrocution, and yet that wasn't what killed him.

"The stomach is—missing?" Sam says. "Torn out?"

"No," the coroner says, her eyes crinkled with distaste, and she flips the sheet down to prove it—the paunchy skin isn't pretty, lined with black coroner stitching from the autopsy, but it's not shredded by a monster's claws, either. "Taken out through the throat. Somehow. Wouldn't want to meet whoever's doing this in a dark alley."

The throat's shredded. The damage hidden, neatly tucked inside the shell of the body, other than the branching veins of the lightning scars spidering across the man's neck and shoulders like frost climbing a windowpane. Sam touches them, muffled through blue latex, and when he looks up Dean's frowning, flicking through the medical chart.

More data, no more answers. The cops say all three bodies were found on the side of the road, right next to their stalled-out cars. Dean runs down biographies on the corpses while Sam researches possible causes, and when they meet up again for (Dean's) lunch there's no connection between the victims, different ages and races, fat and thin and single and beloved. Dean eats a burger, leaning heavy on the bar counter while Sam digs through the internet, and he shakes his head, talking about the last victim's wife. "He worked nights," he says, smearing guacamole from the corner of his mouth. "Didn't even realize he was missing until they called her. Poor lady."

Sam drags his hand through his hair. He ditched the tie, earlier, his jacket slung over the back of his chair. Even with the ubiquitous air conditioning, there's sweat clinging his shirt all the way down his spine. He's been pulling together what information he's been able to upload from the bunker's files, but this isn't a combination he can remember seeing. Dean drains his second beer and pulls out an actual paper map of the Phoenix area, flips open the file they took from the cops, and starts to work at something. Sam stares at the TV behind the bar, daytime shows with local ads, something nagging at his head.

"Hey," Dean says. He nudges Sam, taps the map. "Check this out, look how the bodies were found."

Solitary roads, more or less. The victims all had decent reasons for being on them. The three locations are decently far apart, but all three are on highways leading east out of town, toward the big green splotch of national park, with the name Dean circled: "The Superstition Mountains?" Sam says.

"Yeah, like that's not suspicious at all." Dean slides the map over into Sam's space, drags his plate back in front of him so he can work on his fries, smearing them through the dripped guac and burger juice. It's—not the daintiest meal. "Okay, we got the where. Now, what's the what?" He sucks on his thumb, raising his eyebrows at Sam. "Hey. Is it—can you—you know."

Sam closes his eyes. "It's not—Dean, I don't have a mental map of all monsters."

"What good are you, then," Dean says, light and ribbing, and Sam rubs his knuckles against his forehead. "Hey, come on."

They're getting a handle on this. They are. That's the whole point of this damn hunt, aside from stopping more Phoenicians getting killed in in the Superstitions. The dark sits inside his head, waiting, but he opens his eyes, pushing that away in favor of the slick polished bar hard under his elbows, the too-loud generic pop pouring tinny out of the speakers overhead. The map's a little crumpled from Dean shoving it in his back pocket, and Sam smooths out the corner, where the legend and city logo are wrinkled under the smeary circle of a beer ring. He taps his thumb, there.

"Look," Dean says, quiet under the music. "If I—if you don't want to—"

"Wait," Sam says, blinking. He's staring at the map. An idea, growing cautious inside his head. This is the best part of hunting. Figuring it out. He lays his hand flat on the logo and looks up to find Dean frowning at him, leaned in close. He's focused, steady, and Sam can't see the thing on his arm. That's enough, right now. That's how Sam's going to get through this.

*

Quetzalcoatl, the thunder-bird, the feathered snake. In monsoon season the storms sweep down from the mountains to the south, lightning carried down through the valley to crash, brutal, against the city. Sam's seen the storms on television—when Kansas isn't going on about tornados and there are no hurricanes to cover, an Arizona haboob covers a few minutes for freaky weather quite nicely—but he's never been inside one. Well, that's going to change.

It's the work of a few minutes to track the weather when the previous victims had died: late afternoon in the middle of a downpour was the last any of them were heard from, and storms are common enough this time of year that it didn't drag at anyone's notice. Not that the local cops would have the means to take care of business if it had.

The weather man on the local news channel doesn't think it'll rain, tonight. Tomorrow, though, for sure. Dean chews at the inside of his cheek, watching hunched forward on the foot of the big king bed. "Why do you think this guy bothered with that much spray tan," he says, absently. "Like there's not enough sun out here?"

On Sam's laptop, continental weather maps track with what spray tan is saying. So, not today, and it doesn't rain much in the morning, and so that leaves almost twenty-four hours before they'll have something to fight. Dean's drumming his fingers on the slick comforter, mind clearly miles away. Focused on what, Sam wants to know, but on the other hand he doesn't. He lets his vision shift and the light of Dean's soul blazes so bright in the dim of the room that it nearly hurts. Nearly. The fault-lines spreading out from the mark still aren't too deep, aren't too black, but he's not clean. He won't ever be, with Cain's punishment seated inside him.

"Time to kill," Sam says. Dean grunts. Back in the solid world Sam puts his laptop on the bedside table, and Dean says, "You wanna go get dinner? Mexican food ought to be decent in this town, at least," and Sam slides down to the end of the bed where Dean's still staring at the television and tucks up behind him, reaches down and slips the remote out of Dean's hand and turns it off while Dean's still startled enough to be arching back against his chest.

"Raincheck on the dinner," Sam says. He tosses the remote onto the TV console and Dean turns his head, his nose nudging up against Sam's jaw. "Unless you've just got to get yourself some tacos."

Dean's shoulder tucks in against his, and a warm hand slips up the back of his untucked shirt. "Hm," says Dean, while Sam presses his mouth against the perfect turn of his cheekbone. There's a smile pulling at his voice. "I can probably wait on the tacos."

"Good," Sam says, and then Dean pushes him over backward on the bed and he gets a lapful of brother, just like that, grinning and flushed and sweating already. He gathers up a nice double-handful of plush, gorgeous ass, squeezes lightly, and Dean rolls his eyes but leans down of his own volition to kiss Sam, his hands braced on either side of Sam's head on the mattress and his mouth tasting like—himself. Perfectly and only himself. Sam bites his lower lip, lightly, and Dean says, _oh, like that?_ with a wholly satisfied cant to his eyes, and Sam shrugs, and then Dean's hand slips down below his belt and they don't talk much at all, for a while.

They order a pizza, for Dean, later—it has chorizo and green chiles on it, which sort of counts as Mexican, Dean says—and they watch a bowdlerized-for-TV version of _The Big Lebowski_ , and sometime after that Dean falls asleep in his tugged-on boxers, sprawled on top of the comforter with sweat dotted at his temple and down the pretty valley of his spine. Sam tongues a kiss soft against the smooth pale plane of his shoulder, picks up the taste of salt, and then he pulls on jeans and boots and a tee—too hot for anything else—and slips out of the room, into the muggy midnight.

Asphalt's still bleeding heat, and the city's a wash of light, neon and those yellow-clad streetlamps, cars still dopplering past the motel despite the hour. They don't spend much time in cities this big. Clouds stretch thin over the mountains to the east, but there's no storm, no smell of wet electricity on the horizon, and so they haven't missed their window. Sam hopes he's right, about this monster. They've never fought a quetzal before, but the everything about the case so far lines up with what the Letters had written down all those years ago. He doesn't know how to kill it, officially, but as Dean pointed out: decapitation works on just about anything, and if it doesn't, they can work out something once it's in two pieces.

The parking lot is just about empty. This is not tourist season. He wipes at the sweat on the back of his neck and presses his back against the hot stucco of the building. If anyone comes out, it'll look like he's—having a cigarette, or something.

He starts small. Gravel's crushed up against the sidewalk and he takes a deep breath, focuses. Lifts a little piece, one at a time. It's not hard to flick them out with the force of thought, the little pieces ricocheting over the parking lot to skip across the street. A crushed empty beer can floats up as though of its own volition and bobs steadily over to the trash can by the motel office. Drops in with a clank.

He's sweating, but only because it's a hundred degrees. His head doesn't hurt. His chest does, in a weird and distant way, and he drags his hand over his face, smears the salt-damp that's gathered there. He checks reflexively to see if his nose is bleeding but it's not, either, because this is just—who he is. It's as easy as breathing. Requires about as much thought.

"Hey," he hears, some strange and unfriendly voice, and it's—oh, that old guy from last night, paunchy and damp-haired, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. "What are you doing?"

The manager, or owner? Sitting in the back office when they checked in; he stared under his brows while they booked their room. Sam opens his mouth and then has to shut back the first thing he thinks. He smiles instead, and says, "Just getting some air," which isn't totally untrue.

"Yeah, I'll bet," the guy says, then snorts. Sam frowns. The guy takes a drag from his cigarette, looking Sam up and down with obvious contempt. "What, did your _partner_ chase you out of the room? Have a little fag domestic?"

Hostile, but flatly so, and the ripple of shock is cut by—oh. There's a bottle in the guy's other hand. Drunk. The surge of something Sam doesn't acknowledge crests, his jaw creaks, but he doesn't have time for this. It's just some moron. He makes sure his fists unclench, makes sure his voice is steady, and he says, "Get inside, buddy," in a tone that could almost be considered friendly—only something slips, inside, because old buried fury doesn't exactly go quietly, and while he's still working on making his body obey him the guy's face goes blank, expression melting off so fast it's like a switch was thrown, and he drops his bottle and his cigarette and turns on his heel and goes back into his room, the door slamming behind him.

The cherry burns for a few seconds until the spreading puddle from the liquor makes it hiss out. Sam sucks in a breath of stale-smoke air, while a big truck goes by on the road. Easy. It's—all so easy, god, the power there and waiting without him even needing to reach for it. He remembers this. Years ago—a lifetime. Longer. Andy, that poor kid, miserable because life was eager to hand itself over, the world entire on a platter except for the parts he couldn't bear taking. The worst of what the demon had parted out to them, Sam always thought. How lucky he'd been, he thought, that premonitions were all he'd had to suffer.

The door to the room closes softly behind him. Dean's still sleeping, now flat on his back. Sam takes a shower, only turning on the cold tap so that the water comes out lukewarm, and then curls up on his side of the king. He's glad there's no pretense, anymore. No more safely separate beds, no holding back. In his sleep Dean's warm, his arm crossed over his chest, and Sam doesn't touch him, doesn't want to wake him, but he rolls in close and watches Dean's breathing, the soft snuffing sounds that are usually about all the snoring he makes.

Worth it. That's what he has to remember, every time. No matter what his body does, no matter how his mind and blood and soul shift and change and try to push through his skin, try to make him someone he didn't want to be—he chose this for a reason. Dean's breathing. Dean's here.

A louder sniff, a snort, and Dean's eyes slip open, bleary. He hums, mouth shaping a sound that blurs into nothing, and he stares unseeing at Sam for a second before he flops over onto his belly, his arm tucking in against Sam's chest. Too warm, instantly, and there's going to be sweat in every spot where their bodies are touching. Sam licks his lips and curls his hand around Dean's forearm, feels him. Solid. Like earth itself. Sam closes his eyes and shifts his wet head against the pillow. The aircon clicks on, pouring a fresh blast of cool air into the room. Storm'll come tomorrow. They've got a few hours, still.

*

Afternoon's drifting hotly down toward evening and Sam is absolutely roasting in the Impala. They're out on a small side road, on the way to a place which Dean insists is actually called Tortilla Flat, and the mountains rise up huge through the windshield. Sam's the unlucky driver whose car has broken down out here in the wilderness, and he already has a little speech all rehearsed if someone drives by and wants to stop, but so far there's only been one big SUV with mirrored windows and it sped up on its way past where the Impala sat, getting progressively dustier.

He's got the door propped open, and all the windows rolled down, and a big bottle of water that he's trying to resort to only when he thinks he might actually pass out from the heat. The road cuts through a narrow slice of valley, rocky hills rising up on either side so this curve is almost blind. Somewhere up on the hill, hidden behind a boulder and probably turning lobster-red in the sun, is his brother, waiting to provide backup in case the quetzal comes too fast. Weather report says a storm's due any minute, and the clouds are climbing higher and darker to the east, a bruise-black backdrop to the cactus-dotted mountains. It's a waiting game. He hopes the quetzal comes for him, and not some other poor sap who doesn't have a machete tucked under their seat.

His watch has just ticked past five o'clock and his shirt's totally soaked through, sticking to the vinyl, when the wind starts to pick up. There's a strange smell to it, damp and something else, but it's such a pure relief snaking through the open windows that he can hardly focus. _Going to be soon_ , he texts to Dean, and after a few seconds gets a _No shirt_ in response. Wind's blowing harder, coming from the behind him now, and he blinks in relief for a second but then—oh, if what's coming is coming—he scrambles to roll up the windows, cranking them back up flush with the car and then slamming the driver door behind him, his whole body immediately protesting the lack of airflow. Not a moment too soon, though, because the sky goes dark, and he swivels in the seat to find—oh.

The wall of dust slams forward, the world flashing to dim, the sun disappearing into a strange amber light. The Impala rocks on its wheels and the wind roars past, the dust blowing in so thick that Sam can hardly see a dozen feet in front of the car. There's no way Dean can see down—and he must be getting scoured, too, up there on the slope—and Sam breathes the still warm air inside and stares through the windows, trying to get any glimpse of what they're hunting.

In the squared-off view from the windshield the world's just gone, but in the dust something—shifts. Sam sits up straight, his hand curling around the handle of his machete. For a second it seems like nothing, like a mirage born of heat and the sweat getting in his eyes, but then: a crackle, the boom of a thunderclap shivering the ground and rattling into the car, and then lightning arcs crazily sideways through the swirl of storming dirt. Another boom, louder now and cutting through the roar of wind, and the lightning arcs out again, piercing symmetrically through the storm, picking out a shape almost like wings. Sam licks his lips, bites them between his teeth, and in a second the frazzle of lightning resolves. Shadow, solid: a woman, naked, resolved so suddenly out of the storm that it looks like she was always standing there. Her skin's dark, a brown like she's been baked under the sun out here, a rope of black hair swinging out over her shoulder in the whipping wind, and her eyes—

Sam texts _now_ as fast as he can, but his phone's flashing, no signal. Fuck, fuck—she's smiling, a wide raptor smile, and her eyes are black from edge to edge but for the serpent-slit gleaming lightning-bright out of the center. She's close, way too close, and she's cocking her head at the car like a hawk sensing prey. Sam throws the door open and comes out with the machete held like a sword in front of him.

The wind catches sharp at his bare arms, almost knocks him off-balance with how it's knifing through the valley. Lightning cracks bright enough to blind him and the shadow of wings carves hugely through the dust—bigger than angel wings, less solid, and she cocks her head again and feels nothing at all like human, and when Sam blinks his eyes shift to that darker universe without him even trying and there's no light, there, no dark for him to grab onto. A monster, through and through. "Stop," he says anyway, and blinks to find her taking a step closer, and then another, her legs moving awkwardly as though the bones aren't fitted together right. He reaches for the always-ready power and says it again, _stop_ , so deep it reverberates in his own ears, but she doesn't stop, doesn't pause, and as she gets closer he sees—her skin glints weirdly in the amber dust-light, a strange pattern to it—like _scales_ —and he lifts up the machete but the wind picks up high and whistling-fast in his ears, a sound like screaming, like the shriek of hunting birds.

He drops the machete, claps his hands to his head. Lightning arcs out and hits the ground near the car, a thunderclap and a smoking burn-mark left behind, and arcs out again and sings blinding over his head, and then—a strike, right to his shoulder, so fast and intense and painful that the world fuzzes out, for a shocked-bright second. He falls onto his ass, smacks a hand to the spot and feels the skin boil into blisters, flings his other hand out on instinct, trying to keep her away, and—when he blinks, when he can see again, she's being shoved by something invisible, her toes leaving furrows in the dust clumped thick over the asphalt, her brows drawn down in confused fury. He heaves for breath, spots dancing around the edge of his vision. Fuck, it hurts. The machete—he doesn't know where it is, it's somewhere in the dirt, and she's screeching now, pushing forward against the barrier of his will and thunder shuddering almost constant through the air, the wind rushing faster. She shakes her head, her shoulders flexing. She fixes her alien awful eyes straight on Sam—and then Dean's running past, out of absolutely nowhere, boots pounding and held underhand in a tight grip: the First Blade. Sam gasps out _Dean_ and his barrier falters but it doesn't matter, because even as her hands flash up to claw at Dean he flips the blade around in his grip, ducks a shoulder and shoves the blade up into her guts, carving right through the scaled flesh up to where her heart ought to be. A shriek. The lightning bursts above their heads in a lightshow that makes Sam hide his face, scattering down through the dust storm, and when he can see again Dean has heaved her backwards to fall onto the road, black blood streaming down from her rent guts and dripping from his hand, from the blade itself, but then—the light in her eyes gutters. Her body spasms and then goes still, and as it does the wind starts to die down. The air starts to clear.

"What—" Sam starts, and then has to cough. There's dirt in his eyes, all over his scoured skin, gritting awfully between his teeth.

Dean appears, down on one knee—says Sam's name and knocks his hand away from the scorched skin, where his t-shirt's burned and shredded open. His fingers are fast and careful, even wet with blood, peeling the shirt back to get at the ruined skin, but. It's knitting together, the burn healing. Sam's skin clears slowly but surely until, a few seconds later, it's like nothing happened at all. Dean's thumb sweeps over the smooth spot, and Sam looks up to find a deep frown pulling at his brows. He sucks in a deep breath and Dean's eyes dart up to his, and he sinks back onto his heels, shaking his head. "You're okay," he says. He's covered in dirt, in his hair and caked to his face, his black t-shirt gone a weird tan.

"You?" Sam says, and when Dean nods he drags his hands over his face, sifts his fingers through his hair and feels the gross grit of dirt stuck to sweat. It's everywhere, on both of them, except where Dean's one hand is covered in black blood, still clutching the barbaric curve of that damn blade. "You brought the First Blade?" He tries to keep his voice even.

Might not have succeeded, totally—Dean's jaw clenches, if only briefly, and he flips it around in his hand so the cruel tip points at the ground. "Worked on the monster, didn't it?" he says, and then immediately: "You can move stuff with your mind?"

Sam licks his lips—a mistake, his mouth full of the taste of dust—and then there's another rumble of thunder, above them. The wind's still blowing, though not so horribly hard as it was, and Dean scrambles up to his feet, looking around. The quetzal's still dead, her body still pouring out blood, and nothing in the lore had said anything about hunting in pairs—but then, behind them:

"Hello, boys."

Crowley's immaculate, his suit perfectly black as always, his hands in his pockets. He grimaces down at the dirt all over the road, and even as Sam's staggering up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Dean the wind gusts and sends a poof of dirt all over Crowley's shoes, his tie fluttering up to smack his face. Dean snorts.

That gets them both a sour look. "Why can't I ever find you muppets in an Oberoi," Crowley says, buttoning his coat together irritably. Raindrops smack into the dirt between them and Sam glances up to find the storm right over their heads—with the quetzal gone, the dust's being taken over by the real monsoon. It'll be pouring, soon.

"What are you doing here, Crowley?" Sam says. "How did you even find us?"

"Oh, that did take some doing. Especially after my good friend Dean ran out on all the wonderful times we were having. That hurt my feelings, you know." Dean rolls his eyes and Crowley's mouth tips ever-so-slightly into a smile, his eyes skipping down over Dean's body. Stupidly, Sam tenses, no matter what's changed. "I should've been able to find my knight, but somehow you just wiped yourself off the map. Lucky for me, a clever little tracking spell did the trick." He points at the First Blade, held ready in Dean's fist, and then tucks his hands into his coat pockets. "Figured you couldn't resist using it forever, junkie."

"Shut up," Dean says, with a darker edge than should really be there.

Sam puts a hand briefly to Dean's back, but something's off, here. Crowley's smug, but not smug enough, and no demonic minions are bursting into view around them on this crappy little stretch of road. Without backup, there's no version of this fight where Crowley comes out on top. Sam lifts his chin. "What do you want?"

He says it flatly. Crowley narrows his eyes, focusing on Sam, and there's another rumble of thunder up above as the rain starts to come down harder. "Very atmospheric," Crowley says, almost under his breath, and then he snaps his fingers and it's like there's suddenly an umbrella, invisible, arching over the half-dozen yards of air above them. Dean glances up, surprised; Sam feels the magic in it, a ripple of grey-gold that wavers visibly when he looks with his normal sight—and when he lets his vision slip to that darker place it's like a solid bar, so tangible he could reach up and touch it.

"Sam Winchester." Crowley sighs, like he's disappointed. When Sam looks back down Crowley's standing very straight, his hands back in his pockets but his expression anything but casual.

"He knows," Sam says.

"What?" says Dean, frowning in Sam's periphery, but Sam's watching Crowley.

He's watching Sam right back, assessing. An invisible pressure settles against Sam's chest, light as a finger resting on the skin, and with a thought Sam brushes it away, dissolves it into nothing, and Crowley's eyebrows hitch up, his chin lifting. "So. I take it you did some reading while we were away."

A pulse of heat in Sam's stomach. _Away_ , like it was a vacation. Like Sam wasn't going out of his mind. Like he didn't.

"I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose." Crowley smiles, nodding at Dean. "Our boy over there's a troublemaker. Once you pop, you can't stop."

Sam's stomach turns over. Dean takes a step forward, the blade held ready in his fist, and Crowley holds up a hand and Sam can _see_ the pulse of power that freezes Dean in place. Dean stops in his tracks, his jaw clenching, but with the mark it won't hold him long—but Crowley holds up a finger, looks to Sam and says, "Call off the attack-squirrel, would you, Moose? We need to talk."

"You're not in charge here," Sam says. The rain's really coming down now, spattering off the umbrella of invisible force above them, so they're surrounded by a curtain of blurry grey. Shredding the pressure holding Dean takes no effort, but he puts a hand on Dean's shoulder to stop him moving forward, anyway. Has to ignore the look Dean shoots him. That's for later, has to be. "Why shouldn't we kill you? What's to stop us?"

Crowley hasn’t moved an inch, unruffled. "Nothing," he says, with a shrug. "Isn't that why you've been eating your demon snacks, Scoob?" He smiles at Sam, briefly. "I hear smoked lung is quite piquant, but it can get a bit of a soggy bottom."

With everything that Crowley is, shame shouldn't be an emotion he could possibly elicit. It hits Sam under the heart anyway. He swallows and he can't look at Dean. Can't.

"I should've killed you about fifty times," Dean says. He shifts his grip on the First Blade.

"Nearly did with that singing, sweetheart," Crowley says, with a fake smile (and Sam thinks, _singing?_ ), "but it's lucky you didn't. I didn't bring a white handkerchief—they don't go with the ensemble—but it is time to parley. I've got a deal for you boys."

"There's nothing you have that I want," Sam says. "Not anymore." Dean glances at him.

"I wouldn't be so sure, Bitey." Crowley tips his head. "To return to the start: yes, I know what you did. Consumption of souled flesh. A sacrifice, and all the power that follows. Blah blah. That little ritual got buried with Azazel, before the Apocalypse-that-Wasn't, but it's my business to know everything about hell there is to know." A rumble of thunder, over the mountains; lightning streaks up the sky. Crowley looks over, a faint ironic smile on his face, and then his eyes slide back to Sam. "How one becomes king, for instance."

Dean's frowning when they look at each other. "What?" Sam says.

"Really," says Crowley, rolling on like there was no interruption, "I should be getting down on my knees. Although I don't know if that's really your style, my liege."

He sketches a shallow bow, a small smile just-visible when he peeks back up. Sam knows he's staring. More thunder, and around them the dirt's turning to thick mud while the rain roars in his ears. Dean's gone very still.

"The devil's own vessel, handpicked and bred to perfection over millennia, with power over all of hell." Crowley's not smiling, now. "You could wipe me out of existence like flicking lint off one of those precious flannel shirts. No more Crowley; a Winchester win. But then: what happens next?" Dean shifts his weight, and it might be a coincidence that his elbow brushes Sam's. Crowley's eyes flick down, and stay there while he keeps talking. His voice is very level. "Winchester and Co., controlling Hell. Not a bad gig, if you can get it. Only, the souls keep coming. Wicked pile-up. Demons form factions and everyone's always got a new idea about how best to torture humans, and someone's always conspiring to get the throne. And maybe, maybe you don't have to worry about that." Crowley darts a look at Sam's torn shirt, his clean healed shoulder. Sam puts a hand over it, sick to his stomach. "Maybe the demons start to threaten someone else. Someone precious. How many murders will it take to get them to stop? How much corruption can a clean new soul really take?"

Rationalizations come so quickly. Sam turns away, looks off up into the mountains, the trees and brush soaked to dark grey-green through the downpour. He can picture it. That's the worst part. He can imagine how easy it would be. One decision, stumbling forward into another, and another, and soon enough—

"What kind of life would it be," Crowley says. "Saved, twice now, and for what."

Dean's boots scuff in the dirt. "Get to the point."

"I know what you need, Sam." Rare enough not to be called some stupid nickname—Sam glances over and Crowley's taken a step closer, his voice lower. Earnest. "I know the cost. I'm willing to pay up, gladly. Demon of your choice, whenever you need one. But you kill me, and the chaos that will pile up will make the last few years look like child's play."

"You're seriously using the 'devil you know' argument," Sam says.

"Better the devil you know than to know yourself the devil." Crowley shrugs, his hands slipping back into his pockets. "You can do what you want, Bullwinkle. I'm just offering a way forward. Consider it." He turns, as though to walk away, and then winks at Dean. "Careful with the donkey bone, darling. Don't want to cut up those soft hands."

He disappears. The barrier he'd been holding above them disappears with him and the rain comes crashing down. Dean curses, ducking, but Sam tips his face up to the downpour, letting it wash some of the dirt away. When he closes his eyes, when he looks, the dark world surges up around him and it's not hard at all to follow that corrupted familiar thread to find a red-black column of smoke. He could kill him, right now. What then?

"Hey," he hears, and he blinks into normalcy with Dean's hand tight on his elbow, Dean looking up at him through wet eyelashes, both of them already soaked. The blood's dripping slowly from Dean's other hand.

 _Careful_. "We need to deal with the body," Sam says. Dean frowns, his mouth tight, and Sam shakes his head. "Not—now, okay? I can't—let's just finish this."

A nod, curt. Dean tucks the blade into his belt at the small of his back, the cruel jagged shape of it peeking out below his sopping t-shirt, and that's another thing. Later. Sam drags his hands through his hair, shoving the wet mass of it behind his ears. Later.

The quetzal looks, now, just like a woman. The scales that sheathed its body have disappeared, or dissolved, the claws drawn back into the short narrow fingers, and now it's just—naked, ruined. Young. The only clue that anything might be amiss is the black blood, puddled under the body and washing away with the rain. Whatever she might have been is gone, now. They just need to cover their tracks and leave nothing behind that's too strange for the cops. They're old hands at it, by now, but just at the moment nothing at all comes to mind. No plan, no next steps. The rain keeps sifting down.

*

King.

The drive from Arizona to Kansas is about fifteen hours, the way Dean usually drives. They take it a little slower. In the high desert just east of Santa Fe they stop for the night, at a motel with a really overpowering coyote and turquoise theme, and Dean leaves Sam in the car while he goes inside to pick up a room. Sam leans his temple against the window. Midnight's so much cooler here.

The city's small enough and far enough away that the stars are out in full force. Past the blue neon coyote howling on the sign—do coyotes even howl?—he watches a satellite track blinking across the sky, disappearing and reappearing as it passes through the light of the waxing moon. Inching toward full, and then it'll wane again, and then the sky will be empty, and then it'll just—start all over. Endless cycles. Sam bites his lips between his teeth, sinks down on the seat, closes his eyes.

He'd expected to die. He'd been okay with it. After everything, it's not like he hasn't been waiting for death around any corner—but, of course, Dean wouldn't stand for that. Stupid of him, in retrospect. He knows the lengths they'll go to for each other. Their current situation is proof enough of that, even without all their years of suicide and sacrifice and murder. Every time, every desperate rescue, consequences crop up, but they never seem bad enough. Not compared to the stomach-turning wrongness of turning to the other side of the bench seat and finding it empty.

The driver's door opens and Dean's weight settles back inside. Sam doesn't open his eyes and it's silent as the Impala rumbles back to life, the world gently shifting as Dean pulls them around to whatever side of the motel they'll be ending up on. Reminds him of being a little kid, getting dragged all over the country. Simpler times.

The engine cuts and it's quiet, for a few seconds. "I ain't carrying you up the stairs," Dean says, finally. Not much humor to it. Sam sighs, sits up, and Dean's looking at him, his eyes hard to see in the dark interior. "Come on," he says, at last, and creaks open his door, and so Sam obediently follows, taking his share of the bags and walking up the concrete steps, down the wide walkway to one of the anonymous rooms. Colder inside, with that smell of carpet cleaner and Febreeze, but there's still just the one king bed. Sam closes his eyes. A relief, easing something he couldn't put a name to.

On the table, Dean's unzipping his bag. "BYO-minibar," he says, under his breath, and hauls out a bottle of bourbon.

Sam sinks down on the bed, his hands folded in his lap. Before they packed up and left town, Dean put the First Blade into the trunk, folded up in its scrap of leather, and there it's stayed. They haven't talked about it. They haven't really talked about anything. Dean grabs the little bagged-up plastic cups from beside the sink and tears one open, pours himself a double-shot. He glances at Sam, and then pours a second. "If you haven't figured out if this works on you," he says, eyes on his hands, "tonight might be the night."

"You think this'll be easier if we're drunk?" Sam says.

Dean gives him a look, and then hands over the very full cup. "Yes, Sam," he says. He heels one of the chairs around so it's facing the bed and drops down, leaning back. "I think this will be a lot easier if I'm drunk."

Neither of them take a sip. Sam stares at the carpet, industrial-thin with one of those impersonal multicolored patterns, designed to hide stains. He runs his thumb over the little ridges on the plastic cup, bumping along.

"So, uh." Dean clears his throat, shifts. Sam watches his boot heel bounce a few times. "God, this is dumb," he says, under his breath, and then: "Your powers."

 _Powers_. Like this is an arcade game, or that tabletop roleplaying thing Sam's college friends sometimes used to play. Feats and flaws. "What about them," he says, cowardly, and Dean scoffs. He looks up and Dean's glaring down at his bourbon. Sam bites the inside of his cheek, and sits up straighter. "Yeah. I'm—they're back. Or, I don't know, came back to the surface, something like that. But, you knew that."

He doesn't remember eating, not clearly, but that lash of power knocking Dean away—he didn't imagine that. Dean still has a bruise on his shoulder.

"I didn't think it was still—" Dean shakes his head. "What happens in Vegas," he says, and finally does take a swallow off the booze, a gulp that makes his lips pull into a grimace. He rests the cup on the edge of the table, and at last his eyes shift to Sam. "Didn't realize you could just—use them, all the time."

Sam presses his lips together. It doesn't take much concentration to find that just-there part of his mind, waiting ready, and with a glance he flicks the lamp off, then on. Dean in shadow, and in amber, and shadow again.

"Show-off," Dean mutters, and when Sam turns the lamp back on he's leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. "What else?"

"I don't know," Sam says, and it's the truth. "I—I think I can force people to do what I want. Like Andy, back then, remember?" Dean's eyebrows jump high. Yeah, Dean hated that, too. "And we know I can control demons. Move them, kill them. Cure them. I haven't had a vision, not like I used to back then, but I'm thinking, maybe… in theory, any power one of the kids like me had, I could have. Makes sense, if the ritual came from Azazel, too."

"No wonder Crowley's freaked." Dean licks his lips, scrapes his teeth over the shine left behind. Crowley didn't seem that freaked, to Sam—more calculating, figuring out his next move. Trying to play every angle. Then again, Dean maybe knows Crowley a little better, now. Dean stands up while Sam's trying to shove that thought down, away, and he moves over to the curtains, twitches them aside to look out at the nearly-empty parking lot. "You really could take his job, if you wanted."

He lays it out there, neutral, like it's a possibility. "You think I should?" Sam says.

Dean stands silent for a moment. He's put on that thick red shirt, with the weather cooler this high up, and his shoulders are very square, held straight like he's facing a firing squad. Sam wants to touch him. Instead he stays right where he is and tips the plastic cup to his lips and swallows the whole thing down in three big gulps. It stings, alcohol ripping down his throat harsh and hot to bloom terribly in his belly, and he doesn't taste a thing. Of course not.

"I used to have these dreams," Dean says. He leans against the wall by the window, his own half-full cup resting against his stomach. "Before I—before hell. I was down there, and it was always like a movie, you know. Flames and, whatever, whips and chains, the whole shebang. I'd be tied up and I knew something bad was coming, but I couldn't picture what. Like dreaming about sex when you're still a virgin, how everything's kinda off because you can't know what it's really going to be like. Scared the shit out of me, either way. But then a door would bust open, and you'd be there, and I'd be so damn relieved, and then it'd turn out you had yellow eyes."

Sam sits up straight. "I don't—" He hasn't looked in the mirror. It wouldn't even make sense, but the horror of it is crawling straight up his spine, his hair standing on end. "I don't, do I?"

Dean looks up from the carpet. Sam, heart thudding in his chest, stretches out his fingers and steals Dean's cup, pulls it across the room to his own hand a little too fast so the bourbon sloshes up against his skin, and he stares right at Dean while he does it. "No, Sammy," Dean says, voice softer. "And give me that back, you got your own."

Dean walks over, takes the cup out of Sam's hand. Good thing, too, with relief making Sam's fingers nerveless for a weird close second. That old nightmare, dodged. He doesn't know why—it's not like this isn't worse, like it's not so much more and horribly worse, but.

"Your eyes don't go black, either." Dean drags the chair closer, sits back down. His knees aren't quite touching Sam's, but it's a near thing. He shrugs, lips pressing tight. "Not when you're—I don't know, doing your demon stuff, whatever it is you can do. Not when you're… feeding, either. You just look like you. Gross you, but you."

Sam nods, looks down at the empty cup he's slowly crushing between his palms. "You do, too," he offers. "Now that you're human again. It's just, when you use the blade, you get…"

"Yeah," Dean says. Resigned.

What a pair. The cup snaps under the pressure, and the thin plastic slices into his palm, like a paper cut. He turns his hand up, the tiny hurt stinging, but even as he's watching it heals up, and his skin's as smooth as though it were never there—just a dot of blood where the damage used to be.

"Do you think I should take over?" Sam says. He smears the bit of blood. So little it just blends into his skin.

"Do you want to kill Crowley?" Dean says. His voice is—neutral. When Sam looks up, he's sitting back, his eyes tight, but he's not trying to hide.

Sam could ask. Dean would tell him, he's pretty sure, and—he could make Dean tell him the truth, if he didn't. Just the fact that it occurs to him pulses sickly in Sam's stomach and he has to drop his eyes, staring instead at the plain black field of Dean's t-shirt. The not knowing crawls under his skin, just as much as the pictures his imagination so cruelly supplies. _Darling_.

"Yeah, I want to kill Crowley," Sam says, honesty making his voice a little rougher than he'd like, "but that wasn't what I asked."

Dean's chin lifts. After a few seconds, his jaw clenches in that familiar way and he runs his fingers over his mouth, like he's trying to hide it. "I don't know, Sam." He shrugs at whatever expression Sam has. "Seriously, I don't. I mean—we spent, what, half our lives running away from this stuff. But, you know, you in charge instead of one of those evil psychos? You're a pain in the ass, but you've gotta be a better option to run hell than one of them. Even Crowley."

"Thanks," Sam says, dry.

Dean doesn't smile. "Using the powers, though, being around all that crap, all the time," he starts, and then trails off. Chews the inside of his cheek. "More I use the First Blade, the more I kill, the worse I am. And back then, when you were getting trained by—by Ruby, and the demon blood and everything, and your powers first coming up. More never seemed better."

He'd thought so, at the time. Weird, to remember being such a child. Grasping at power, like that meant something about who he was.

"When you were in the cage," Dean starts, slowly. He pauses, and then tips the chair back, stretching back to reach the bottle of bourbon. "Could you see—out? Could you see what hell was like?"

He refills his cup all the way to the top, takes two quick swallows, and then tops it up again. "No," says Sam, watching his hands. They don't talk about this. "I saw part, something, when I had to go down and grab Bobby's soul for the trials, but. No, I didn't see much. Benefit of having a private room."

Dean doesn't smile. He drops the bottle to the floor, next to the chair. It lands with a thunk. "I think…" He takes a sip, tries again. His voice comes out lower. "I think, maybe, there's no version of hell that isn't suffering. No matter what, no matter who's in charge. Just seems like a... I don't know, a baseline of what the whole thing is. Maybe it's waiting, or loneliness, or getting strung up, or burning. They're all razors. You can't stop it."

Sam's chest hurts. Dean's eyes are half-shut. They don't talk about this, either. "Should I—we could close hell," he says. "I could get rid of Crowley and we could close the doors."

"Go through the trials, again?" Dean's mouth twists, almost like a smile. He hands Sam the cup of bourbon. "And who'd be the sacrifice? You, or me? Would it even work, with what—with how we are now? And if it did? What then, one of us dies? If it's me, and you're left alone, what happens when your month runs out, and you can't get what you need?"

Sam opens his mouth and closes it. That many questions—Dean's thought about this, already. Sam can see the conclusion in the clenched line of his jaw. He thinks back to the church, his heart pouring bloody onto the dirty floor, and Dean's hands bruise-tight on his. No. Dean's right, they can't. More than that, they won't, and that realization makes Sam sit back on the bed, tip his head up at the ceiling so he doesn't have to see Dean watching him have it. They won't. God, are they really that selfish? Darker ideas pop up at the back of his mind—someone else could do the trials, someone else taking the brunt of fate for once—but they've never passed the buck in their lives and they're not about to start now, and the shame that crashes over him at the idea makes him take a shaky, weird breath.

Dean's fingers brush over Sam's knee. "Drink up, Sammy," he says, quietly. "Let's just… go to bed, okay. We don't have to decide anything tonight."

"Yeah," Sam says, and drags a hand over his face, and dutifully he swallows down the rest of the shot, his stomach warm despite how it's twisted into knots. They take turns showering, with Sam going first, and when the bathroom light flips off when Dean's done he crawls up behind Sam in bed and puts his hand right in the center of Sam's bare back, and like that in the dark Sam cries, finally. Silently, his chest so tight it feels like warning for a heart attack, his lungs struggling as he tries not to make any noise.

The room's dark, the curtains drawn. Like always, they're hidden from the world, a step away from it, and most of the time Sam finds that a strange sort of comfort. A space apart; their lives separate, but entwined. Now, his chest won't stop shuddering. He hasn't, in so long. Not since Dean died. Feels selfish, stupid, but he doesn't know how to stop. Dean doesn't hug him, or drag him in close, or say anything. He just stays there, the warmth of his body stretched along Sam's back. His hand lays flat on Sam's skin, heavy as an anchor.

*

Sam puts the First Blade into a heavy mahogany box in the library that used to hold a dozen scrolls with curse-work from the Yucatan. It's not spelled in any way, not magic. It's just a box, on one of the middle shelves under the posed scimitar. The lid locks, and Sam locks it, but he puts the key on the shelf in plain sight. No point in hiding. Dean watches him do it, his jaw ticking, and then he goes down the stairs into the hall, and not long after that Sam hears rattling from the kitchen. Dean making dinner, presumably for one. He nods, and goes down to the gym. He can get a workout in, while Dean's occupied. It might help him sleep.

There's too much time to think. That's always the problem. Hours and hours and hours in every day, and in all those awful nights where the ceiling never holds any answers.

For the first time in almost a decade, he thinks about that girl Ava. Sweet, and then terrified. Less than a year, living in that camp under Azazel's charming tutelage, and she'd been terrifying, ready to murder. Happy to. What would she have been like after a gallon of demon blood, he wonders. Would her eyes have gone to black? To yellow? Could she have done the ritual? Would she even have hesitated?

He doesn't practice, with his powers. He doesn't have to. They're waiting, ready, all the time. He goes for a run out between the fields, ten miles at a steady loping pace with the sun beating down on his shoulders, and as he runs he lets his vision slip into that other place and runs through a dark world. By a pond under a huge tree he takes a break, stretching his hamstrings, and he looks out over the vast expanse of farmland. Bursts of light, out in the fields. Past them. Souls in a constellation-cluster through the tiny town of Lebanon. No demons, not for miles and miles, and he stretches his arms up, folds them on top of his head to breathe as deep as possible, and lets his thoughts unfurl out over the landscape, farther and farther until—ah, yes. There. A swirl of black, among a sea of bright. A demon. Old, though not nearly so old as Crowley, filling up a meatsuit empty of human soul—already dead, when the body was taken, or died in the taking? Sitting in a crowd, maybe an auditorium or a theater. Sam could yank it here, if he wanted. He doesn't know what its plans are, what it's doing, what it wants. If it's under orders or acting alone. He could rip the demon across two hundred miles of insubstantial air and have it shuddering in front of him, could force it to its knees. Could cure it. Could kill it. What then?

Dean's reading in the library when Sam comes back, sweaty and not tired enough. He gets a once-over, Dean wrinkling his nose. "Don't come too close," he says, eyes going back to his laptop. "You look like you reek."

"Nice to see you, too," Sam says, and goes to take a shower, alone. When he's dressed he checks his phone, at the desk in his room. The new app he's installed informs him that the moon will be full in three days. They haven't heard from Crowley. Sam doesn't have an answer, yet. Not one he's willing to give.

He finds a hunt, and then Dean does. A vampire, first, and that's a careful steady tracking, a cautious female who's been keeping a bloodslave husband, and only lately has managed to drop a victim too many. They corner her in her loft in Omaha and she has a gun, of all things—Sam freezes her hand and Dean takes off her head. Simple, easy. Easier than it used to be. After that comes the three mysterious deaths in Memphis, and a long drive and a longer handful of nights, digging up clues and following trails to what eventually turns out to be a skinwalker, stealthing its way into family homes and finally stealing everything there is to steal, and killing the mother while it's at it. "Why?" Dean asks, his gun pointed at its chest, and it smiles a wide awful smile, showing all its teeth, and lunges snapping, and the shot takes it in the heart. It's dead before it hits the floor.

They save the day. Heroes. The husband of the last family who'd hosted the shapeshifter holds his wife's hand in her hospital bed, her throat bandaged white, and he looks at them with brimming tears and he says, "We'd be lost, if it weren't for you." Sam smiles and knows it doesn't reach his eyes.

Driving toward home that night, pointed west under a huge black sky, under a waning moon. Dean's quiet, Black Sabbath at a reasonable volume on the tapedeck. Sam hasn't eaten in almost three weeks and he finds himself pushing at his teeth, through the thin muscle of his cheek. He hasn't lost any weight. Hasn't lost muscle tone. His hair, his gums, the whites of his eyes, they're all just and exactly the same, like a snapshot was taken and he can't ever change. He wasn't hurt, on either of these back-to-back hunts. Not a scrape, not a bite or bruise. He runs his tongue over his teeth, in his mouth that tastes of nothing, and then sets his molars into the side of his tongue and bites down as hard as he can, through the shock of pain until blood bursts through in a flood of salty copper. His mouth fills with it, immediately, his vision blurring through the haze of tears, and he keeps his face turned out the passenger window so Dean won't see. Three weeks, with nothing. The blood pools at the back of his tongue. He almost doesn't want to swallow, but soon it's too much, and he does. It hurts—throbs, in that awful way where he can tell it'll catch every time he moves his mouth—only then it hurts less, and less. He closes his eyes, presses his knuckles to his lips. By the time the song changes on the tape, he's healed, and the only hint anything was different is the metal taste clinging to his palate.

"Let's stop," he says, after another few miles. His voice comes out mostly normal. Dean might look at him, or not—he keeps his eyes on the dark landscape flitting by out the window. "I don't want to drive straight through."

"Says the guy who's not driving," Dean says, but quietly. There's a town coming up in nineteen miles, according to the sign they pass. The car glides over to the right lane and nothing more is said about it.

The motel is in Arkansas, or Oklahoma. Sam hasn't been paying attention. Nondescript, with everything done in tan and blue and surprising pink, and they get the room at the very end of one of the low buildings. The parking lot's nearly full. Sam puts his bag on the bed, breathes in the muted smell of pine-fresh cleaner, and he says, "I want to take a shower," and closes himself into the bathroom before Dean can object. If he was going to object.

Twenty minutes under the spray and he doesn't feel better. Cleaner, maybe. Steamed to pink, his skin hurts a little. That'll change, soon enough. He doesn't bother dressing again, just walks out into the room with a towel held loosely around his hips, and Dean's stretched out on the bed with his boots off, the TV silent on SportsCenter, a new bottle of whiskey uncapped on the night table. His eyes go right to Sam, and Sam can see the concern there, he's not blind, but he still doesn't want to talk about it. Not yet.

Dean's wearing jeans, a blue canvas shirt, a thin grey henley. Sam sits on the edge of the mattress and tucks his fingers into the part of the henley to find bare empty skin, and Dean opens for him when he leans in for a kiss. Soft, and Dean's careful when he kisses back, his hand slipping up into Sam's damp hair. His tongue presses in and Sam's not surprised when he flinches back, frowning at the taste of blood, his eyes darting between Sam's. Sam licks his lips, Dean's salt barely there, and he doesn't know what his face might be doing but it's enough that Dean sits up straighter, his hand sliding down Sam's back. Sam closes his eyes, and curls down, and puts his forehead to Dean's shoulder. He doesn't want to talk. He doesn't want to think.

He ends up spread out on his front on the mattress, the pillows shoved out of the way, his hands curled up by his head. Two fingers work inside him, coaxing, while Dean presses open-mouthed wet kisses to his shoulders, the knob of his spine, the back of his neck. Naked, above him—a warm shifting weight, the mattress tipping ever-so-slightly as Dean moves. Sam keeps his eyes closed, his face half-buried in the sheets, and spreads his legs at the gentle nudge of a knee, and lets his lips part on a breath at the soft rub of a thumb over his balls, the smear of a sticky hand over his ass. Stiff bump of Dean's dick, slipping into his crack—a grasp at his hip, plush lips to his shoulder—and then the push in, smooth and just the right amount of painful, too much lube and a stretch that pulses through his thighs, his balls, his own dick where it presses flat against the bed. He arches his back, makes a noise in his chest, but all he gets is a shush whispered damp against his skin. A shift, in the weight above him, and his thighs are pushed closer together, and the heavy dick inside him angles deeper. His hands curl into the sheets and he turns his face flat against the mattress, his breath rebounding warm and damp against his skin, and then Dean starts to fuck him—slow, a shallow rocking rhythm that doesn't even shift Sam against the bed, and he squeezes his eyes tighter, his toes curling, his belly already filling up with heat. Yes, this. This.

Been so long. The rhythm barely changes, just that careful churning stretch that aches up all the way through his pelvis, and his mind drifts, his body drawn out into the slow long taffy-pull of building pleasure. He's leaking, but a heavy hand against the small of his back, all that weight pushed right against his hips, means he can't move, can't thrust into the mattress, and after a while a hand twines with his, their fingers lacing together and keeping him still. He shudders, thighs quivering. Takes it.

Eventually Dean pulls out, his dick smearing against Sam's ass, his thighs. _Come on_ , he murmurs, somewhere, and somehow Sam rolls over even with his muscles gone to liquid, and through splintery light he sees Dean's face, flushed, his eyes bright, and he gets the briefest kiss to his lips before that mouth drops and sinks down on his dick, swallows him almost to the root while three fingers fill him up below. His whole belly flares with the shock, his heels dragging up, and Dean suckles soft and relentless and forces pleasure like a lance through his gut and he comes out of nowhere, jerking into that wet heat, his hands cupping the sweaty sides of Dean's head and his hips arching up helpless, defenseless.

He melts against the bed, lolling back. Distantly he's aware of jostling, weight moving up and over him again, and then a mouth on his, kissing him, bitter salt and plushness, and then—warm spatter, on his stomach, his wet softening dick. A hand to the side of his face. Like safety. "Sammy," murmured velvet against his lips. He turns his head, turns in, draws Dean up against him and feels his warm sweating skin, his softness, the hard edge of his bones. Drifts there, for a while. Empty.

A kiss to his shoulder. Dean rolls off the bed, leaving him to sweat alone, and Sam listens—to him pissing, and then the sink running. The mattress dips again, on Sam's other side, and Dean says, "You want to clean up?" Soft, like it doesn't matter either way.

No, Sam doesn't. He wants to lay here in the lamp-bright sweaty tangled sheets and never move again. He tips onto his back, stretches out, and when he finally slits his eyes open—there's Dean, sitting at his hip, watching him. He's tender, cautious, when he tops. Like he's worried Sam will break. Sam's chest hurts, again, for a whole new reason this time, and he curls his fingers over the top of Dean's thigh, squeezes. "Come here," he says, his voice unexpectedly raspy, and Dean obediently leans down and lets Sam kiss him slow, and wet, and easy.

They lay together, side by side, once they've swabbed themselves enough that they won't be sticky. SportsCenter's still playing, absurdly, and Sam stares at that ex-running back from the Titans in his ridiculous purple suit, his arm curled around Dean's neck while he idly traces shapes into Dean's chest. Dean's hand lays on Sam's thigh, his head on Sam's shoulder. Sam's sweating, all the places they're touching. His mouth doesn't taste like blood, anymore. Just Dean.

"If you want to take over hell," Dean says, quietly, "I'll back your play."

He doesn't look up, and Sam tucks his head down a little, presses his mouth into Dean's soft hair. He lets his fingers drag up Dean's chest to his throat, presses down just enough that he can feel the beat of his pulse. "Tell me what you want," he says, muffled.

Dean turns his face in, presses his lips just above Sam's nipple. Shifts onto his side, under Sam's arm, and puts fingers to Sam's tattoo, covering it up. "The idea of you, in charge," he starts, and it could've been a dig, big brother being an asshole, except that it's so low and flat. He still won't look up. "It'd kill you."

Sam looks up at the ceiling. "It'd kill you," he says, in return, and Dean shrugs, not denying it.

Is there a throne, Sam wonders. Lucifer was a self-aggrandizing prick—he assumes there must be. A seat of iron and bone, somewhere in that shadowed pit, and smoke curling awful around it. Supplicants and beggars, pleas and punishments to be doled out. Dean, standing at his right shoulder, and hell kneeling below him. Power, and control. Everything's a razor.

"No," Sam says. It unfolds behind his heart. Guilt, but relief too, roaring up. "I won't."

Dean pushes up on his elbow, so that Sam's hand falls away, and the look on his face is total surprise. "You sure?" he says, hope underneath his voice, and Sam nods, and Dean pushes in and kisses him, close-mouthed, his hand flat on Sam's chest. "Thank god," he mumbles.

Sam snorts, and Dean smacks his stomach. "You know what I mean," Dean says.

A burst of noise, from the room next to theirs—a TV turning on, and voices. Late, though not so late that other people being awake is that strange. Dean slides down, turning his head to watch their own silent television, though Sam bets he's not really taking in much information about the Vikings' chances this season. His ear is briefly cold, a fragile shell on Sam's chest before their skin starts to equalize. Sam listens to the people in the next room. Funny, how often he feels… alone. Him and Dean, down in their bunker, the weight of the world always crashing down. His hearing's not quite good enough to hear what the other couple might be discussing, but it doesn't sound angry, or passionate, or sad. Just a conversation, and a motel with thin walls. Just people. He drags his teeth over his bottom lip and closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the cheap fabric headboard. He listens. The ordinary world keeps ticking on, no matter what.

*

They get back to Lebanon around noon the next day. Sam's in charge of the post office while Dean swings through the store. Coupons he throws away, a pair of credit cards forwarded from one of their dummy boxes, yet another invitation for one of Dean's fake identities to apply for mortgage refinancing. Once, Dean tried reporting that that guy was dead. The offers didn't stop coming.

He walks out onto Main, the weather close and muggy. Summer's leaving slowly, humidity rising up from the thick grass. The Impala's a huge black slab, glowing in the sunlight in front of the market, and Sam crosses the street and sits on the trunk, watches the town. No one around—no one ever is—but still, there are a few cars parked here and there. The little City Hall building is open, god knows why, and he'd bet the secretary's reading her book at the desk. Makes him smile, unexpectedly, and that's how Dean swings out of the store and finds him, two bags in hand and a case of beer tucked under his arm. "Do I amuse you?" Dean says, barely bothering to do the accent, and Sam rolls his eyes but takes the beer, tucks it into the backseat.

Sam rolls his window down for the drive back out of town. Clouds coming and he's betting there'll be a storm, lightning crashing through the fields, the clouds piled up so high in the stratosphere it seems like they should be breaching into space. For now, though, there's just the moist wind, and the earthy fertilizer smell of the fields, and hot asphalt, and the car. Dean drives easy, his elbow hanging out of his own window. For a few moments Sam's just—unutterably, inexplicably, glad. They're going home.

The gate's been moved, when Dean pulls up to the half-hidden drive, and they sit up straight in unison. Dean glances at him, across the seat, and Sam gets out slowly, looking around, but—and he _looks_ , the golden world disappearing into darkness, but there's not a human soul in miles, and not a demon, either. Sam opens the gate and waits for Dean to drive through before closing it properly, and he's leaned forward in the passenger seat when they pull down the dirt drive, while they come around the curve to the entrance, and—

"Oh, shit," Sam says, without thinking. Dean throws the car into park. There's a big gold Lincoln Continental planted awkwardly in front of the bunker, and Sam closes his eyes. God. Apparently calls can only be dodged for so long.

"He didn't tell you he was coming?" Dean says, and then tightens his jaw at the look Sam gives him. He drags a hand over his face. "Okay," he mutters, and then he says it again, and shoves his door open. Sam sucks in a long slow breath, his stomach pulling into a twist, and then gets out, too. It was coming, one way or another. He wishes he'd thought of what to say.

The main lights are on in the war room and library, and Castiel's standing up from one of the rolling chairs when they come out onto the landing. "Sam," he says, that relieved rasp, and then he freezes with his mouth open when Dean steps out from behind Sam.

Guilt lodges in Sam's throat, immediately. How long has Cas been waiting, thinking—what? That Dean was dead? That Sam might be? "Hey," he says, inadequately, and bites his lips between his teeth, and takes the bags out of Dean's hands to lead the way down the stairs.

"Dean," Cas says, in that way he always says it. Like it's a sentence complete in itself.

"Hey, buddy," Dean says, coming down the last steps behind Sam, and Cas looks at Sam, and then at Dean, and then walks straight at Dean and hugs him, that awkward too-much Cas-hug, the way Sam taught him.

Dean lets out an _oof_ , but he hugs Cas back after a second, patting his shoulder. His head dips, for just a second, and guilt rushes through Sam from a whole new direction. He puts the groceries on the war table and presses his lips together, and when he turns around Cas has finally let Dean go, pushed him back, is staring into his face. Angels, seeing miracles.

"How—" Cas starts, and at last he looks at Sam. No stoicism, here. Cas looks blasted open. "How did you find him?"

Trenchcoat, rumpled suit, shadows carved dark under his eyes—Cas looks just the same. Sam meets Dean's eyes, over Castiel's head, and Dean raises his eyebrows, like _you first_ , and—Sam knows, he has to, but he has no idea where to start.

"Cas," he says, and pauses, but Castiel's… still looking at him, closer, his eyes darting from Sam's face to his chest to the air around him, and while Sam's still groping for words Cas takes a step back, knocks into one of the chairs around the war table.

"Sam," Cas says, again, but the tone's different. Darker. "What did you do?"

Behind Castiel, Dean stands up straighter, frowning, and Sam lets out a shaky sigh. "Take a seat, Cas," he says. Time to confess. "We need to talk."

They sit at the table, Cas at the head by the stairs, Sam in the closest seat he could find to drop into. Dean leans against one of the pillars, a beer held undrunk against his thigh while he stares at the floor, and Sam talks. The research, the books, the uncovered ritual. The slip of realization, while the world realigned into a new understanding. Possibility. Cas sits with his head in his hands and Sam spares him details. He doesn't talk about draining his own blood so his veins sat nearly dry, nor about the almost giddy-making rush of power that poured in, as furious and fresh as it felt to have an archangel's grace gilding his bones for the bare second before he was crushed under the tsunami.

"Why didn't you…" Cas says, and sighs. His hands drop to the table and he stares. Sam can't read his expression. Confusion, or worry, or denunciation. "Sam, why didn't you let me help you."

Silent, Dean's eyes flick to Sam, too. He stays still, in his chair. "You couldn't help," Sam says, and he tries not to say it like an accusation. Those long weeks, months, Cas getting sicker and sicker, everything they tried just a screw-up, like the failed attempts they'd made at capturing a demon together. Cas staggering, blood on his lip when Sam helped him up with his one remaining good arm. Another ally gone, Sam realized, and left Cas there in that house to recuperate—worried that he'd left him to die—but right then, it was nothing Sam could think about. Something more important crowded every other consideration out of his head.

Castiel's still staring. "This ritual," he says, voice dragged over rocks. "I don't know it."

"Figure it wasn't meant for angels," Dean says, unexpectedly. When they look over he shrugs, folding his arms over his chest, the beer held against his shoulder. "Sammy was supposed to hold their big hitter in the heavyweight boxing match-up of the century. Why would they let slip, if they thought it'd make him a better vessel?"

"And you, Dean?" Cas says, frowning. "Are you healed?"

Dean's mouth twists. "I'm okay," he says. His sleeves are rolled up enough that the mark's visible, if only just. "Sam can't touch the mark, but he—he fixed me." He rolls his lips between his teeth and Sam looks down at the floor, the checkerboard shadows filtered down from the refraction above. "Can't ask for more than that."

Quiet, for a few seconds. Sam lets his eyes fall shut, and looks with other senses, and where Castiel sits is—a void, in the room, while Dean blares like a sun. Settles it, in a way. Grace isn't for Sam to touch.

"Cas," he says, eyes still closed. "Can—could an angel possess me? Like this?"

"No," Cas says, instantly, and the relief about makes Sam burst into tears again. God, he's a wreck. "Your soul, Sam, it's—different. Changed. I can barely look at it. Only an archangel could touch you, now."

Bars waver in front of Sam's eyes, the shadows on the floor shimmering to something worse. "Good thing they're dead or gone, then," Dean says, flatly.

A pause, and Castiel says, slowly, "There might still be a cure for the mark out there. There might be a cure for you, too, Sam."

"You think so?" Sam says, looking up.

Cas looks at him across the table, grim. Sam realizes he has no idea what Cas has been doing, these last months. He was dying, and now he's not—his color good, his vessel strong. What secrets have they both kept, he wonders, and it's Cas who looks away first.

"I'll look," he says, his voice even rougher than normal. He turns his eyes on Dean, standing like he's pledging allegiance. "There has to be something."

"Thanks, Cas," Dean says, when Sam doesn't. He doesn't know if Dean believes it, or not. Doesn't really matter, either way.

Castiel leaves that night. Sam's still sitting in that same spot at the war table, his arms folded in front of him. It doesn't startle him when there's a scuff of boots on concrete, and then a beer appears at his elbow. Dean sits in the chair at his right, close enough to touch.

"Ground control to Major Tom," Dean says.

Cas read all the research, just as Dean had. He didn't come to a new conclusion, even with all those millennia of knowledge. Before he left, he asked to examine Dean, and they went off to some other room, and Sam didn't follow. He doesn't know what they talked about. Isn't sure he should ask.

"Do you think he'll come up with something?" Dean says, when Sam's silent for too long.

He doesn't sound hopeful, but he doesn't sound like he's in that Dean-pit of pessimism, either. He's just asking. "I don't know," Sam says. "It's a big universe. There might be something."

Dean huffs, sinking down in his chair. "Yeah. Unicorns and rainbow kittens and a decent Ladyheart album, those could all be out there, too. Think positive."            

Sam unfolds, stiff, and uncurls his fingers. The beer slides smoothly across the glossy tabletop and settles into the curve of his palm. Cool, a little damp with condensation.

"I guess I gotta get used to that, don't I," Dean says.

Sam shrugs. "We're going to have to get used to a lot of things."

A beat, before Dean stands up, and his hand lands solid on Sam's shoulder. "Lucky thing we're quick studies," he says, and finally Sam has to look up, has to see what expression Dean's wearing, and it's—hard to read. One corner of his mouth turns up, and he squeezes Sam's shoulder before he lets go. "C'mon, Sasquatch. Let's go to bed. Maybe I can get you through Army of Darkness without passing out this time, huh?"

Sam snorts. "Think positive," he says, and then, "Be there in a minute."

He listens to Dean's footsteps recede, down the steps, down the hall, and has to swallow down the lump in his throat. Dean's steadiness puts the earth to shame.

The duffel with their weapons is still sitting on the ledge by the library steps, waiting for Dean to store them away in the morning. Sam unzips it, opens up the contents to the light, and pulls out one of their purloined angel blades and the knife Ruby gave him, so long ago. He takes off his flannel shirt and hooks it over the control panel, and rolls the sleeve of his t-shirt up enough that he has the bare clean skin of his bicep to work with. High enough that Dean won't see, if he's wrong.

A cut, with each, horizontal lines with his hand steady. Neither stings worse than the other; neither burns, neither bleeds out in any color but red. It hurts but hurting isn't anything new. The blood trickles in long quick lines to puddle in the crook of his elbow, and he grits his teeth and the muscle under the skin quivers, clenches, but he doesn't touch the cuts. Metal of heaven, metal of hell, both spelled to the last molecule—and right in front of his eyes his skin starts to knit. A handful of breaths and there's no sign of any wound but the red smeared down to his forearm. He chews the inside of his lip, using his flannel to wipe the blades, and the mess. Zips the duffel closed and makes it like he didn't do a thing.

His phone's half-charged, in his pocket. He holds it, staring at the grey screen, and then thumbs it to life, finds his contact list. _Two days_ , he types, and sends it.

He's not even halfway down the hall when his phone vibrates, soft in his hand. _You name the time and place_ , it says, with a winky face, and Sam shoves it away into his pocket. The flare of irritation has to wait. There's a movie to sleep through.

*

Gunshots keep cracking up from the range. Sam closes his eyes, trying to read. Pointless, but at least he's trying. He can't—Dean deserves space, but Sam's been counting, because he can't help it, and that's three clips now that have been unloaded into pointless practice, and there's only a few seconds of silence before there's another muffled engine-backfire _crack_ that jolts through the halls, and he closes his book, his heart thudding anxiously, and he shoves to his feet.

Dean's not wearing the ear protectors, of course not. His feet are regulation-distance apart, his shoulders square, sighting down his gun arm, and Sam's eyes aren't quite good enough to see the spread from back here but he has a guess on how perfect it is. He waits until Dean gets to the end of the clip, his own eardrums throbbing with every squeeze of the trigger, before he says, "Hey," and it's lucky that he waited because Dean spins around, gun at the ready, and his face is—

"Hey," he says, flatly, and it takes him a second to drop the business end of the gun to the floor. Sam raises his eyebrows, and Dean's nostrils flare but he slaps the gun down on the counter, clank of metal on stone. His jaw's ticking, his eyes on the floor, and Sam comes up and leans against the edge of the stall he's using but he doesn't touch him, not yet. Dean braces a hand on the counter. "Got a case, or what."

"You know I don't," Sam says, quietly, and Dean's shoulders go tight. He turns and looks at the target, and Sam glances over too—the grouping's very neat, heart and head pierced. When he looks back at Dean, he takes in the hunched-high shoulders, the hard line of his jaw, the way he's staring forward. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Dean says, predictably, tight.

Sam sighs. "Dude," he says, and Dean glances over, quick. Sam shrugs. "Don't you think—aren't we kind of past this? We've got enough problems, man. Just tell me."

Silence, for a long minute. Dean ejects his clip, loads in a fresh one, racks the gun and sets it square in the middle of the stone counter. "Can you—" He clears his throat and braces his hands on the counter, leaning hard against it. "Can you see my—my soul?"

Sam blinks. Dean hasn't wanted to engage with his powers, not really. "Yeah," Sam says. It's so easy to slip to those other eyes, the world flooding down to dark except for Dean's nuclear soul, flaring so bright that Sam sways away from it, just for a moment. He gazes into it, his eyes hurting but also soothed, like they are after staring too long into a fire, heat banked under his corneas. "Why?"

"What does it look like?" Dean says, almost distant.

Dean turns and the blaze of him shifts, flickering. "Light," Sam says, but that's insufficient and he knows it. "You're—bright. So bright I can barely stand it. I can feel you and it's like… I don't know. Sunlight."

He blinks and Dean's staring at him, frowning, and when Sam's eyes meet his Dean's cut away. "You can see the mark, though, right?" he says. "So, what, is it—a cloud? Rot? What?"

He's upset—every line of him, his hunched high shoulders and his popped-out knuckles, his mouth set into something ugly. "What," Sam says.

Dean doesn't want to talk. His head tips away, and he shakes it, and then he turns around with his back to the targets and stares at the dark observation room, his hands braced behind him on the counter. Like this, Sam can't see the mark. "We've got a handle on you," Dean says, looking straight forward into the shadowy glass. "It's—well, it is what it is, but we know how to deal with it. Me, I'm…" He sucks his cheek in on one side, chin sinking down toward his chest. "This thing, it's gonna make me worse. It's gonna happen again, just like it did before, and I…"

"Dean," Sam says, automatic denial, but Dean doesn't look at him. He hadn't—he's been so focused on his own crap, his own problems. Dean's close enough that Sam can touch him, but he's so taut Sam doesn't quite dare. He rubs his hand along his jaw, thinking. "Did Cas say something? When he checked you out?"

They didn't talk about it then. Maybe they should have. "No," Dean says, and then immediately amends it to: "Not really. Just—it's stuck, it's part of me. Not anything we didn't know."

"Yeah," Sam says. Dean glances at him, then lets his eyelids fall shut. He still looks tense enough to snap. They'll hunt, they'll keep hunting, because it's the life they've chosen. Somehow it didn't occur to Sam that the thing that'd keep Dean on any kind of even keel, the thing that would let him live and stay steady, was the thing that'd hurt him, too. Even with the First Blade stashed safely away, even if Sam has Crowley hide it in some dark chasm, some pit where they could never find it—just the killing will be poison enough. Death by a thousand cuts.

"I wish I could show you what it looked like," Sam says, quietly. Dean frowns and looks at him again; Sam shrugs. "It's kind of like an angel's grace, but not that sharp, and it feels more right. Like… I don't know. Like waking up in a bright room, and it's a sunny day outside, and the light's warm on your face."

Dean's staring at him. "Okay, Hemingway," he says, after a pause.

Sam snorts. "Listen," he says, and to his credit Dean does. Sam reaches out, touching Dean's bare forearm. Warm and steady, and when the world shifts and his soul flares into the surrounding dark it's—right. That's all Sam can think. Just right. "When I see demons, they're just—black, like smoke, but it's worse than that. They're corrupt, disgusting. Like an infection. You're not."

There's a thin thread of wrong, spiraling through Dean's light, and there maybe always will be. He opens his eyes and Dean's face is turned away, and Sam steps in close, slides his hand to Dean's back, feels his heat all along Sam's front. "It's not nothing," Sam says, honest, close. "But I can handle it, too. It's not on you."

"Yeah, it is," Dean says, rough.

Sam sighs, and slides his hand up to the back of Dean's neck, shakes him a little. "Fine. But it's on me, too." Dean gives him a look, almost glaring, and Sam shrugs. He'd kiss him, if he didn't think he'd get bitten for it. "I'm all in on this, man. Every part of it. It goes both ways."

Always has, too. He wishes that didn't make Dean's eyelashes flicker with surprise. He gets a nod, though, finally, and he doesn't kiss Dean but he does squeeze his neck again before he leaves. It's not any less tense, but Dean's eyes close. When Sam leaves him down there, going back up to his book, the gunshots don't sound again. It's something.

*

Dean doesn't want to let him leave, when it's time. "What could Crowley do to me?" Sam says, reasonably, and Dean fires back, "Something shitty!" almost yelling, and that's enough to make Sam listen.

"He can try," Sam says, after a moment. Dean's jaw ticks, his brow knotted, and he's glaring so hard down at the kitchen island that he might just set it on fire. "Dean. I'll be okay. I just—I need to do this alone."

 _Need_ is stretching the truth, but Dean doesn't press it further. He doesn't talk to Sam, either, disappearing out into the halls, and Sam doesn't see him again before he takes the car, driving alone a quiet twenty miles out of the vicinity of the bunker. He passes farm after farm, corn and soy and waving wheat, starting to get ready for the harvest. At last he comes to fields that have gone to weeds—a family farm that didn't get bought up into one of the conglomerates, and the family's long gone. A house, boarded up, the paint peeling, and a wide dirt drive under a hundred-year oak. Sam parks, and stands there in the shade looking out at the empty day. The sun's creeping up in the sky, not yet to noon. It's a pretty morning.

He puts his fingers to the silky sift of the dirt between his boots and thinks for a second, and right away the devil's trap starts to bloom out of the earth, big enough to hold a host, clay dragging to the surface to make a pattern steady enough to hold. Sam stands, takes a step back, and closes his eyes. If he were nicer he'd give Crowley some warning.

There—red. He yanks, ungentle, and opens his eyes, and Crowley's standing right in the center of the trap, blinking shocked in the sunlight, a parchment in one hand.

"Hi," Sam says.

"Your maj," Crowley says, after a second, and a second after that he points a smile at Sam. "I beg your pardon, you've… knocked me off my feet."

"Right," Sam says, short, and while Crowley's still trying to get his bearings, rolling up the parchment and stuffing it into his jacket pocket, he says, "I want to be very clear. This deal, it goes both ways."

"Yes, of course," Crowley says, unruffled. "Have you made your decision, then?"

How awful, that even standing in front of Crowley, it still feels like a kind of relief. "I'm not taking over," Sam says, and forces himself to watch Crowley's mouth curl. "You're running hell."

"Your mercy knows no bounds, my lord," Crowley says, bowing his head.

Sam's stomach turns over, queasy. Weird that it can still hurt the same way, with nothing inside it. "Stop," he says, power running under it, and Crowley's eyebrows fly up but his mouth closes, like Sam's holding it shut with a cruel hand. Sam licks his lips and looks out at the empty fields. Weirder to think that one day he might get used to this. "I have some conditions."

Silence, of course, and Sam rubs his hand over his face. He really needs to shave. "Hell is hell, I know that, but I need you to hold the demons in line. The only reason I'm letting you live is to avoid a powerplay. If you hurt humans, if innocent people get caught in the crossfire of some stupid fight—you know there's nowhere you can hide from me."

Crowley's watching him, thoughtful. He doesn't look worried; he hardly ever does. The tendril of magic strung between them holding Crowley's jaw shut is visible, a clear wavering line in the air, and Sam relaxes it with a deep breath, but even free Crowley doesn't speak. Sam licks his lips, and folds his arms over his chest. "What do you know about the knights of hell?"

After a pause, Crowley says, "Quite a bit." His voice is very even.

"With—with the Mark of Cain," Sam starts, and has to breathe in deep through his nose when Crowley's eyes sharpen avariciously. He's not killing him. That was the whole point. "Dean's stuck with it. I can't—it won't come off. Will he…" It's hard to even get out the thought.

Crowley's mouth twitches. "Big brother's got a long life ahead of him, Moose, never fear," he says. It almost sounds reassuring. "If he does shuffle off this mortal coil, if those pretty green eyes go black—well, you clearly know how to handle that, don't you."

Sam turns, paces out to the edge of the dirt yard. The weeds grown up in the untended fields rustle under the breeze. The world stretches out, wide under an empty sky. He closes his eyes, briefly. "You know I have to—eat. Every new moon."

"I have some candidates in mind," Crowley says, slightly amused. "There are always troublemakers who could use culling."

"I'm not doing this for you," Sam says, anger surging abruptly up. His jaw clenches and he has count backwards inside his head to consciously calm down. He'll never be comfortable with Crowley.

"That was never in doubt," Crowley says, and then he pauses, long enough that Sam finally looks at him again. His mouth's turned up on one side, his hands in his pockets, standing right in the center of the devil's trap Sam made for him. "I'm going to let you in on a secret, Samuel," he says. "One king to another." Sam rolls his eyes and Crowley smiles, a little more honest than it usually seems. "Once you get that throne, you know what your reward is? Nothing but problems. Power, they tell you. Prestige. The unholy chorus singing your name. Two for one tickets to the torture show." He shrugs, eyes shifting to the middle distance. "Forever is, as they say, a mighty long time."

Sam frowns, and Crowley's eyes dart up to his. "Well," he says, smiling tight-lipped. "I suppose you'll see, won't you."

*

Dean's still mad at him, when he comes home, but he hugs Sam anyway, right there in the kitchen, drags him down to his height and squeezes him tight.

"I told you I'd be fine," Sam says, and Dean just says _shut up_ , but his body's warm and close, and Sam hugs him back, letting his eyes drift closed.

Two more days. He's not hungry, but he knows he will be, and he drags in a slow breath through his nose, trying to stay calm. Dean squeezes him unbearably, for a second, and then finally lets him go, but he stays standing right there, close. "What did he say?" Dean says, rough, and Sam shakes his head.

"Can we—" he says. It's a surprise how weird his voice comes out. Dean's expression changes, just like that. "I'll tell you," he says. He circles his hand around Dean's wrist and shakes his head. "I just…"

Dean watches him, frowning. The kitchen's bright, and Dean's comfortable here, his sleeves rolled up, the stuff for a sandwich laid out on the counter. Ordinary, and human. Sam rubs his thumb against the familiar roll of tendons, the knot of veins. Against all odds, there's Dean's heart, still somehow beating.

Cain lived. He lived, for untold years. Kept control, and he held to his promises, and if there's anyone in the universe Sam trusts to hold to a promise it's Dean. No matter what's come before, or what failures they've had in the past. Makes him a fool, maybe. So what. He's been way worse things than foolish.

"How long do you think the bunker will stay standing?" he says. Dean tilts his head. "I mean, it was built back in—what, at least a century ago, now. Do you think it'll last?"

He gets a squint, that face like _you are the strangest person I know_ , but then Dean shrugs, glancing up at the ceiling, the walls. "They've got enough concrete poured into these foundations to withstand an atom bomb," he says. "Structure's solid, and there are enough sigils worked into—well, _everywhere_. It should hold forever. Wouldn't be surprised if it's still here when the planet actually stops spinning."

Sam's never said it, but he loves when Dean goes into professional mode. He looks around, too. The concrete, the steel. The wood spelled to perfect stasis. Dean hasn't taken back his hand, and he's looking up at Sam. Waiting, steady.

"I'll be right back," Sam says, and takes a step back. "Okay? Give me—two minutes."

Up the stairs, through the war room, down the stairs again, down the corridor. His room, dark, and he flicks the lights and drags open his bedside drawer, pulls it all the way out of the nightstand and drops it onto the bed. Lube, and dusty condoms that he'd flat-out forgotten about, and spare phone chargers, and there, at the back. The box is small, unfinished reddish wood with a cheap hinge, something he picked up a long time ago in a thrift store. He keeps it closed with a rubber band, most of the time, and he hasn’t touched it since he decided to do the ritual. He didn't think he'd be coming back and he didn’t want to lose it. He'd thought, maybe Dean would find it, when he was going through Sam's things.

Sam stands over his bed and holds the box in both hands, in the silence of his bedroom. His phone beeps, quietly, and he fumbles it out of his pocket, but it's just an app notification. The moon, changing phase. The new moon will rise tomorrow, just after six p.m. He swallows. Okay. No sense in wasting any more time.

When Sam comes out through the archway, Dean's leaning on the war table, arms folded across his chest and an expression like thunder on his face. "Two minutes, huh?"

"Sorry," Sam says, but he's not. He stands there in the corridor, frozen, and then takes the steps very slow, the box held in front of him. Dean's eyes go straight to it, of course. Sam could say something, though he doesn’t know what. Some speech, about what this means. Nothing seems adequate. He holds out the box.

Dean takes it, and frowns at Sam, but he tugs the rubber band off, twining it automatically around three fingers, and flips the cheap closure with his thumb, and opens the lid. Sam watches his face. The way his lips part, soundlessly, and the shock in his eyes. They flick up to Sam, confused.

He could tell a story, here. About digging the amulet out of the trash, grief-stricken but thinking it was his fault, either way, so he deserved the misery. About holding it close and hidden, not letting Dean see it. About praying over it, at night when he was alone, even though he knew it was futile. About praying anyway. It didn't really matter what he was praying to. Years, and years, through losing his soul, through losing Dean, through losing himself. He never once lost it.

"What if this goes on forever?" he says. Dean hasn't moved. "You and me, like this. You with the mark, and me—being whatever I am. I'm not sure I can die. I don't think you can, either."

Dean's chin lifts, and Sam watches him take two slow breaths. "This whole time?" he says. His voice is—

Sam shrugs. Dean looks down, and lifts the amulet out of the box. Still on the same cord, though it's thin in a few spots, stretched where Sam had worried at it during that long year of Purgatory. The little bull-horned figure swings. So much heavier than it looks. Dean sets the box aside on the table and catches the amulet in his palm, and then he grabs a fistful of Sam's shirt and pulls him close. Sam expects—a hit, or a hug, braces for either, but Dean only lays his forehead against Sam's chest, his knuckles hard against Sam's stomach. Sam covers Dean's hand with his own, the leather cord slipping against his fingers.

"I don’t care," Dean mutters. It's low, muffled against Sam's shirt. "I don't know what that says about me. About us. I don't care how long it takes, how many demons we kill. I don't care what happens with Crowley, with hell. It's just—you and me. That's all that matters."

"Come whatever," Sam says, under his breath, but of course Dean hears it, and he picks up his head, at last.

Still sitting on the edge of the table, he's shorter than usual, looking up. His eyes on Sam are unwavering. Sam puts his hand on the side of Dean's head, drags his thumb over the perfect line of his cheekbone. He made a choice, and it was worth it. It always will be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All done. I mentioned elsewhere, but this is the 100th SPN fic I've posted on AO3. Thank you so much for reading. I'd really appreciate any thoughts, if you have the time. :)
> 
> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](http://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/179627663864/a-long-hard-day-a-long-hard-night)


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